DevHub Live 50 - Ready Layer One, Shade Agents, Blackdragon, Content Hackathon and More

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:26

   Ooh, tell me what you want. What you want? What you want? Tell me what you want. Tell me what you want. You want you want you And we are back. Welcome back to another edition of DevHub Live, but a special edition as Ready Layer 1 with my former co-host Jared. How's it going? What up?

2. 1:25

   What up? I almost was like, "Hey, welcome to Ready Layer 1, a web 3 podcast that focuses on the near ecosystem." But it kind of still makes sense today. You know what I mean? I think it's actually coming in stronger and really stoked about that. It does.

3. 1:37

   It does. It does actually. So, background dusted off the old hard drive. Found it. You got the whole thing going. I was going to do the whole like, you know, overview, but I guess it's enough. But, uh, no, I really wanted to bring back really one for our 50th episode here at Devub because it's been been over a year now. We've been doing this show uh ready layer 1 lasted for a while and we took some time off and I think it's a nice time to take a retrospective of what's kind of happened over the past year or so because I think

4. 2:08

   the near that we talked about then is different than the year we talked about now. Yeah, you couldn't be more right. I mean the near then it was kind of like we had done it sort of that 2021 2022 era which was a blast. There was a lot of NFT projects and things that and it was a really like that whole era was around and so we there were a lot of projects kind of early stage and some of the tech

5. 2:32

   we were all kind of like talking during building like oh this tech's here and like as tech was being released things were happening. Yeah. And now we're at a different near in the sense that one it's way more advanced in the sense it used to just be kind of the blockchain.

6. 2:45

   Now we've got chain abstraction vertical with like all that kind of stuff that's just like intense which is juggernaut. And then now you add on the whole layer of this like AI agent or aentic protocol like everything about that and now you have a different landscape. Yeah. Um and I think projects are now starting to and we're seeing catch up to that and now they're launching and then you know and then the community the people stuck around you know we're here you know it's been pretty epic. Yeah. I mean, one of

7. 3:14

   the things that's really stuck out is, and we used to talk about it all the time, of like how do we get to the point of actually having some real projects being built more so than just the NFT part of it? Like what comes after that?

8. 3:29

   And you're starting to actually see all that now. And uh I'm actually really enthusiastic about today's episode because the guests we have today all encompass all of that. Yeah. Yeah, it goes from a, you know, we going to have a meme coin that went became an NFT project. It's also a bigger Dow project that's done so much in the community. We have one of the latest technologies of

9. 3:53

   shade agents being talked about. We're talking about, you know, the new content hackathon coming up and just how to expand the content. And it's like there's been a uh new life breathed into not just Near, but I would say like the larger blockchain ecosystem uh around some of this stuff.

10. 4:14

    Yeah, Joe, here's what I remember about Regular One, how thoughtful you are. It's been a while to just like, you know, I always like chatting with you because you're just so thoughtful and you're right. And also, I mean, shout out to the community that was left that's like not staying quiet. I think that is like the most impressive thing is that people will say stuff even if it's like a hard thing to say but it's

11. 4:33

    right or you know what I mean it may or it's open for discussion you know what I mean and I think I mean and you're seeing now there's like I think there's a vibe shift you can start feeling it uh foundations definitely really every call's ecosystem like where are we where are we thinking about them projects founders you're starting to see a lot of things you know once Ilia came back just you know back a year and a half ago I think a lot of this like titan panic ship of near

12. 4:57

    protocol shifted into a really focused area which is dope. Yeah. And I I I really you know for someone who's also building here because we have our own project too and we've commented on stuff and so being so far ingrained with all these different parts of it. I I do find it encouraging that it has probably weeded out some of the people that were not necessarily the ones that were going

13. 5:21

    to actually build and expand upon. and we're starting to see those who have been willing to stick it out and, you know, and see some of that come come through. I'm hoping that people can, you know, build some success off of that.

14. 5:32

    But I think a great place to start is I want to take a moment. I want to bring all our guests on stage together because I think everything we talk about affects all of this. And so I think it's good just to bring everybody up and let's kind of dive into probably shade agents first and that new technology. So, uh, we have Owen from now Proximity, my former co-host, part formerly of DevHub.

15. 5:58

    Um, but now just left, you know, Proximity. Sure. Thinks he's cool, great, you know. Um, we have Ry Taylor, Black Dragon. Oh, yeah. And, uh, just, you know, the everywhere man of Eco e ecosystem. And then, you know, last but certainly definitely not least, Monza here. Talk about content. uh just get focusing the fire hose, getting out the word. Uh he has been relentless on the fire chief, dude. He is out in the socials, man. Absolutely. Behind the scenes making it happen. Shout out.

16. 6:30

    Yeah. So, let's start with with you, Owen. What? I want you to just take a second and maybe reintroduce yourself now in your new role for those who remember you from your DevHub days. And kind of what are we talking about here with Shade Agents?

17. 6:47

    Yeah. Um, good to be here again. It's been uh it's been a long while. I think I used to love doing uh these Dev Hub lives, but yeah, good to be on again. Um, so yeah, at Proximity Now and it's like Dev Rail developer experience, same thing really. Uh, and yeah, the main thing we're pushing is is shade agents, which are basically the best agents within web 3. Uh, they're the only properly autonomous and like verifiable agents in my opinion.

18. 7:26

    Um, and they're not just autonomous, verifiable, they don't just work on near, they're also multi-chain. We love every chain. So sharing the love. Nice. Uh what is I guess kind of just from a high level like what makes a shade agent and shade agent? Like why is it called that? Like what is that all about? Yeah, I don't really know why it's called shade agent. Just kind of a a cool name.

19. 7:56

    Yeah. But um yeah, when like TE's and agents were coming big in web 3, what a lot of people were doing were shoving these agents in a TE to be like verifiable and you can't uh you can't change what code is running inside of it, which is good and it can work for like personal agents when you know like the private key inside of it.

20. 8:23

    But if you really want like an autonomous system agent or an agentic protocol as such that multiple people are interacting with then you can't just like shove a random private key in there that someone knows because then it's basically custodial. So what shade agents does is it allows you to run these agents but without there really being a private key that anyone knows by using chain signatures which has been

21. 8:56

    around for a while. Best use case of chain signatures. Oh, and I'm going to jump in here. And also, Monza rhyme. We can all like this is like a conversation, you know what I mean? Like, oh, and here's the thing that shade agents that I it's a bit abstract, but I think it's starting to like sort of become more visual in my mind, right?

22. 9:14

    So, if if I was to think about a shade agent, like what what does it look like? Is it like an agent and a secondary agent? Like, without using TE and all that, is it just like a dev? It's very dev focused, right? Like a builder focuses on shade agents. There's not like a widget where I hit a couple buttons, right? It's like a you got to do some dev work on them. Yeah, you got to develop it. But I mean, we're still reasonably early in the tech stack, so who knows? Like, we're making

23. 9:40

    improvements every day. Uh before you had to do a load of horrible mumbo jumbo to deploy an agent, but very soon you're not even going to have to like write a smart contract or whatever. It's just going to be pre-eployed for you. Uh shout out Global Contracts.

24. 9:59

    Nice. Can we vibe make these things while yo make a black dragon one that can help amplify fire hose content hackathon? Like I mean I reckon you could just give cursor enough context and create an agent pretty easily. Like it should be reasonably easy. And yeah, what we're doing because you got to really write near smart contracts in Rust. um that's what the stack relies upon. But uh the thing is these these

25. 10:31

    agents run off like Docker images in the TE. So you can write in like whatever language you want, which is pretty awesome. Is a TE just like a black box where two agents can go or an agent can go in and give information and then leave and whatever happens in that black box they're not like sharing with the world sort of. It's like well it's it always stays there. Um, it's just like what is running inside of there. You know what's running and then you can't pull anything

26. 11:00

    out unless you're saying you want to push stuff out of it. Cool. It's the back alley of AI doing mad back deals. Yeah, it's the dark pools. Um, it's the it's the bank of AI. Like you can't get in there. So are shade agents right now just focused on like DeFi related and like token related things or can it really be anything?

27. 11:28

    I think like a lot of the use cases to start off with are going to be DeFi. Like if you've been here for a while you know that proximity has its roots in DeFi. So, that's what we're pretty pretty bullish on. And you may have seen some of the agents have come out already was like uh uh coin one.

28. 11:52

    Yeah. Yeah. That's like a nondefi. No, I guess it is defi. I It's more den that one. Uh but yeah, there's like the mind share agents which trades on like well mind share uh using intent and then we're also bringing out like a an Ave rebalancer using uh shade agents. So that'll be pretty cool. Uh but yeah, there's like sort of nond less DeFi ones where like agents interacting from Twitter and

29. 12:25

    stuff because that's a cool element of it like authentication. You can just interact with them from wherever and it sort of be verifiable. You don't need to hold like a private key as a as just like a user, right? So, what why should you users be excited about shade agents and like how would it how would it make my life, you know, easier if I'm if I'm interacting with proximity or anything?

30. 12:48

    Like how how is that going to how are they going to help me just to, you know, maybe that might help me understand a little bit more about them as well, not being a a dev guy. Yeah, I think we all came into web 3 with this idea of like smart contracts, right? And what does that even mean? Uh it says smart in the name, but they're not really smart. They just sort of sit there and wait for a user to interact with. So DeFi and applications and

31. 13:20

    everything on blockchain is pretty damn boring at the moment. You can't do that much because of like gas limits and limits of the the blockchain like virtual machine. So uh shade agents are trying to make them more smart and autonomous. So this will be an agent that like works on your behalf and like optimizes uh for example yield or your portfolio um without you having to interact with it. Uh and it's like truly on your side.

32. 13:57

    You don't have to sit there and and interact with DeFi and trade um on like a minute basis. It is truly smart and autonomous. Yes. So saves you a bit of time. I like the I like the towel in the background by the way. Was that from redacted? Yeah, that got um that definitely got stuffed in my backpack from the rooftop party there in in Bangkok. That was coming home with me. Nice. I was thinking

33. 14:35

    Yeah, I've got uh I've got all the redacted like nearweek things up there. I've got a up in the right there right above my head is like a a Denver shard dog poster and then just some uh We got a Nico plushy hiding back there. And then just like some band art. A Nico plush. I did I still need to get mine.

34. 14:57

    Are those already gone? I don't know. I I had one. I don't think I ever I didn't want to give them my address. I was like, I want to give like a Google doc. I was like trying to figure out a way to get around it. I've got a I've got an extra I can I can bring to the next. I totally want a rocket, man. I bought the You know, sometimes you just have to sacrifice your privacy to get the merch, dude. I know, but you know, Google Docs,

35. 15:19

    someone's like, "Whoa, you just want like straight info." Okay, I sent my uh I sent my like family home address over Telegram to the Nightly team because I was desperate for their merch. Long as it's your family's house, it's not your own. You don't live there anymore. House is safe. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. Yeah, it was worth it, right? Pink Pay fixes this. Exactly.

36. 15:43

    Rhyme. Oh, dude. I saw that tweet. Do you want to can you talk about that yet or is that still like a little bit like No, I think I I think I have a little bit of liberty to speak on it. uh because I think it's going to be a very fundamental use case for uh for payments, for merch, uh for just general e-commerce. And going back to the principles of uh just again, Bitcoin was payments.

37. 16:13

    Crypto was meant to be payments. It's meant to be transactional. It's meant to help um function these independent ecosystems and economies. And one of the things that uh our friend Jay is doing over at PinkPay is building a what I would look at as a competitor as an alter as an alternative I would say that better um an alternative to things like Shopify and Wix. So uh merchants will be able to whip up their own uh individual

38. 16:44

    merch store um and marketplace and being able to enable crypto payments of uh any kind essentially. And then uh really looking to be able to optimize the onboarding and offboarding uh because I think that keeping things as familiar as possible uh for people outside of our bubble is super important, but also uh just in the sense of like the people that are going to be using this ideally are going to be doing physical goods.

39. 17:15

    They're not looking to uh necess they're not they're not really, you know, they're not looking for for a full degenerate experience. They're not trying to, you know, hide everything. They're just trying to uh do things that they would normally do. And this is a way to kind of like empower uh these different uh these different creators, these different merchants, uh and different vendors. Well, this is why I'm like I think now is the time for

40. 17:38

    this kind of project like a pingp pay because remember back in the like NFT days there were a couple projects like we're going to do merch but I don't think the tech was there yet. The off-ramps, the on-ramps, the there was like it was a little too sort of early stages. Now you're going to have like much different on-ramping and off-ramping which has always been the crux of that kind of project like how do

41. 17:55

    I get money on, how do I get money off and all the other stuff. So I'm excited to see it and also Jay I mean always a fan of him. huge huge fan huge fan of Jay. Uh so Pink Ping Pay Pink Pay realizes a whole lot of dreams. So, uh, really grateful that he's spearheaded that and bringing that to life and going to be a core, uh, component in some of the different initiatives that we're going to be

42. 18:20

    working on, trying to, uh, build up the cultural layer, build up, uh, more content creators and just creators and artists in general, and just being able to have these uh, fundamental marketplaces to be able to operate in. I mean, I my one of my favorite sayings right now is is the world is a marketplace and uh it doesn't really matter how you look at it, but it does operate that way. So, being able to have individuals and uh individual entities

43. 18:46

    being able to own their entire shop uh from the top down as vertically as they want um or feel the need to uh I think is going to be a game changer. And um I think the difference here with what Ping is doing versus as you mentioned these other NFTts that were uh looking to do merch is that was just kind of like something to do, right? Like it's like we're going to do merch because we don't

44. 19:10

    really have anything else to do. And you know merch is easy, but it's also an art form in itself. It's a community building asset. And uh I think that it's going to be a whole lot different whenever that is the focus. You're focused on vendors. are focused on uh the people that are building these brands and these marketplaces are just a tool uh not something that they're just falling back on because they have to figure out how to appease these uh degenerate shareholders.

45. 19:37

    I I like that. And I think you can probably if you want to keep going a little bit on like how this kind of fits into what Black Dragon's vision is because one of the things that's really been important over I say the past few years is that the culture on different chains has seemed to have made a difference in how that some of those chains have grown. And you guys have really tried to both build upon and expand what the culture is. I wouldn't even say continue because that there

46. 20:09

    wasn't much before. So I'd say more of just like try to really expand and take it. So what is Black Dragon doing right now around that stuff? Muted. You muted yourself forever. Forever forever looking for the the mute unmute button. Um but but yeah, I mean as far as like the culture that existed before and what's happening now um with Black Dragon, I I think that you can look at a lot of uh the most positive uh

47. 20:43

    and impactful uh instances of of culture building stemming from that era from the incension of Black Dragon and then the different ripple effects um that it had. And from the beginning, we've always looked at ourselves as an extension of Near, a conduit, a sandbox. Um, really just kind of that complimentary piece that is it, you know, inextricably linked to that parent chain. you know,

48. 21:08

    the the near fascis black dragon for everything else um was one of the original mantras and more than just a catchphrase. It was really something that did genuinely and very unironically inspire me in the way for us to kind of go about that and leverage it and think about how we can use and apply this token. Um use this brand that has more or less become a mascot even before the token itself existed. and give our project more meaning and to be able to

49. 21:42

    have it be uh something that is helping move the larger NER vision forward and with NER itself being such a techoriented uh chain and that being their culture uh we looked at ourselves as kind of the polarity of that and being able to complement that with cultural and social activations uh while using the tech in those different contexts. So, that's really what we're working on now. And I

50. 22:06

    mean, uh, we've got a whole suite of tools and, uh, different things that we're working on, but, um, you know, I don't want to suck the air out of the room either, Jared. Nice, uh, nice handle. I'm just going to keep changing the handles as I go, and you keep dropping great things. You know, like the Woody Page of Ready Layer One.

51. 22:25

    Yeah, totally. I say the the Black Dragon activations at least from from my perspective or uh at these events were the the best time I had out there. So, you know, in in Denver, not this year, but last year, Black Dragon, you know, running around in the the inflatable dragon costumes, me and Cam Dennis throwing throwing eggs out to people, like all that stuff. And the uh the content that came from it was uh was

52. 22:50

    awesome. And it's it's everlasting. like I'm still I'm still using some of that content today and the the relationships and all the all the relationship building and everything that that happens at those events is great. And what Black Dragon did really well was made uh made these crypto events look look really cool, which is it isn't always the easiest thing to do at at some of them, but you know, find find a way to make them look cool, have fun,

53. 23:14

    and Oh, dude. Little like little I'm sure everybody here knows, but Ryan's mad taste maker. always like everything you send I'm always like that looks cool like you know you don't miss so it's cool to see well I think we or are we all still repping our uh profile picks so what is the deal like I still I have like a shard dog one that Joe and I have something that we're going to deal with in the future but I don't know I mean here's the here's here's the here's the thing and you know I want I do want to

54. 23:44

    keep this positive and optimistic because I feel like uh I'm probably very outspoken the other way and I don't want those things to get conflicted but I mean essentially we just lost the last of our NFT marketplaces and again going back to like very fundamental primitives and things and uh there's a whole spectrum of ideas and philosophies around NFTTS and DJN culture that I think you know are valid all across the spectrum um and what we lack are nuance in those discussions but however um

55. 24:13

    whenever a chain loses uh its last native marketplace uh for NFTTS there is a bit of a holding period as we get those things figured out but um to that point we are uh actively in the works in developing our own NFT marketplace and Joe I think you might uh know a thing or two about that from what I understand um but uh alpha wait are you doing that you created we no uh no it's we're looking at it to

56. 24:48

    be a community launchpad and to stimulate um gaming and creative assets where um on the one side rather than again trying to compete with Blizzard and AAA and Microsoft and Sony and all of them um and not saying we couldn't or should at some point but um as the independent Black Dragon team and working with uh some other strong members uh of throughout the new ecosystem um the greatest value that we can give is to be able to provide a uh

57. 25:19

    launchpad for different digital and in-game assets. So, kind of taking the the California Gold Rush principle and rather than trying to just find gold and flips, uh we want to be able to sell those picks and shovels and axes and being able to help facilitate these other experiences so that we can part partner with larger platforms. Yeah.

58. 25:39

    Well, and I think you're bringing up something very interesting right now, which is like there is a lot of amazing infrastructure. the infrastructure is here, right? And now it's like, let's do things. Like, let's The infrastructure is amazing. And now it's like, give me give me something with gaming. I'm in.

59. 25:54

    You tell me what to do. You know what I mean? I I'll I'm I'm in. So, like, I'm excited to start doing stuff like consistently that, you know. Yeah. And and I mean, what I saw I saw some data pretty recently, and I mean, it doesn't take the data to realize that we live in a gaming culture, whether that's a 247 cycle or casually friends. um playing Madden. But you know, even the friends that don't

60. 26:18

    play games, a lot of them, I mean, at least before streaming, had an Xbox or something just to play DVDs um for the old cats out there. And I that was just like a few years ago, for real. Um but gaming culture itself is I I mean, one of the greatest monolithic and shared experiences that we have um today. And I think that's only going to continue to grow. And the stat that I saw was Uh, as far as entertainment, it was

61. 26:49

    gaming is almost double um, significantly more than both music and movies combined as far as as revenue goes. And, you know, again, everything's kind of about gamification, even the even the trading, and we've turned per and everything else into a lifestyle.

62. 27:06

    So, um I I think it's important for any chain uh really to have some kind of gaming uh opportunity, some kind of gaming outlets, and it just so happens that people on our team are deep and uh into that space. So, they do have the insights to be able to provide for that.

63. 27:23

    So, that's uh something that we're looking to go harder. I think I think N is the best chain for gaming to to be a bit controversial here. I mean, we got function call access keys. They were pretty awesome for gaming, but now, I mean, shade agents are going to be pretty big for gaming, and we definitely need to have a sync around that. I mean, you can do whatever you want in there.

64. 27:50

    Like, randomness. We all know what randomness is good for. Spin the wheel. Yeah. Any chance that can we get these shade agents to pull like a They battle each other like everybody makes their own shade agent. They run around the blockchain and they hide in like Twitter and or X and everything and they hunt each other and it's kind of like a Highlander thing where only one can survive or like a you know they're not actually people, right? Like I know I

65. 28:11

    know but I'm I'm saying I can make something like that though, right? Can't we an answer for whatever Jared advocated for more Twitter bot personalities right now? Oh, the thing is they they they get each other and then like if they they they I want to What happens when they get each other? I don't know. Simulate murder on live on X onchain murder. Make it cool. I don't know. We do some cool animations. I

66. 28:36

    don't know. I want to see you build it, Jared. Dude. Yeah. Until I can vibe build it. It's not happening. Okay. Can we vibe or you can vibrate anything? I mean, that's the bridge to in real life to the digital world, the real on onchain murder mystery. Totally. That'd be awesome. What what excites me about gaming? I guess what what makes me unexited about gaming right now is just

67. 29:03

    like the lack of ownership even in in games, right? Like I don't even own half the games that I play right now because they're on Xbox Game Pass, right? So it's like I subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. to put however many hours into this game and then if they take it off Game Pass then I have to go buy it again and all this other stuff.

68. 29:22

    So just even owning your own games and then owning your assets in games that's that's what excites me about just as as simple as that. If I could own my game again and if I could own my cosmetics in games and those were NFTTS that that would be gamechanging. Was that a pun? And they need to they need to open source games as well because like I have some games that I love.

69. 29:53

    Um but they've just gone offline because there weren't enough players. So if that was open source, it'd be awesome if communities could just spin up new instances of the game and uh we could keep playing and have a revival. I want to pull this conversation a little bit back to and this is probably better suited for both Monson and Ryier of like why though now is it better that some of these communities are participating and starting to build out

70. 30:28

    some of this stuff where like we were so reliant on trying to have like you know somebody come in hopefully and build something but now it feels like especially the critical infrastructure stuff like a NFT marketplace or something like that. Coming from a community project like Black Dragon that already exists, like what what what is the benefit there around that?

71. 30:50

    Well, I think you're going to have people staying a lot longer, right? Like when we were just funding projects, funding someone to build this, they would meet their deliverables, right? And we've seen a lot of a lot of projects leave near for for other chains and then just kind of completely abandon the uh the near side of things. If these uh if these projects are homegrown from the community, started in the community and then they're the ones that you know are building the infrastructure, you

72. 31:16

    have much less chance of them of them leaving and then also understanding the community and and what they need and what they want align aligning everything. So what do you think Ryme? Yeah. And I mean to that point, I infra infra is great. Infra is imperative for the entire chain and operation to to function, right? But if there aren't any users, uh it doesn't really matter. Uh so I I think that it's again it's

73. 31:47

    incredibly important to have uh these more cultural experiences, these user experiences uh for people to be able to get involved. like you said, we we just we need things to we need things to do um and we need things to do that is not uh building your own platform and we need those platforms for other people to use. So, we need builders. So, we're stuck in a little bit of a chicken and

74. 32:10

    an egg situation, but uh again, there's several different layers to this crypto industry and space. And we have this dichotomy of tech that is, I mean, rapidly evolving and changing how we fundamentally operate just in society.

75. 32:30

    But we also have a uh community responsibility uh to be able to give users a reason to exist here because ultimately the tech is you know if we want to have everything to be open source uh that means that everyone has access to the same tech and you know there are enough big brains that can do enough with it so that doesn't become an advantage anymore um especially with AI continuing to to equal the playing field

76. 33:00

    as well so you have to really prioritize um these different human experiences and and find a to be able to merge uh those tech value propositions with things that are going to be appealing to um actual users in a game that is vibes driven and money driven. And somehow you have to figure out a way to make the tech make sense without selling off or selling out your entire, you know, treasury to trace chase the latest trends, right?

77. 33:31

    But I think the treasury part is interesting to me too because like so other change you see like every project launches with a token and there's good and bad around that right like there there is good because it gives an instant marketplace but then so many tokens go to zero immediately and now that project is in a hole. You guys at Black Dragon are now an established token.

78. 33:58

    uh you have some stability. Yes, obviously sometimes price fluctuates, but you have some stability as a group, as as a token. Is it something where you guys feel that through that you can invest into building out some of these projects, hopefully take some reinvestment because you're not doing things for free. like there are things that are making money and can do stuff and then you know hopefully feed into that cycle right where again like you've already have that establishment versus

79. 34:28

    trying to go from zero 100% and I for for for my own for my own sake I've always really resented kind of the the grant culture and the grifting culture that has been perpetuated um across across all chains. And when I I got here back in 2021 where uh money was about the fakest it's ever been everywhere and mirror was not unique and I was looking at the way that things were um happening. I was just like what this doesn't make sense. Like we're we're selling people Dows on the idea of like Dows exist as this money funnel and it's

80. 35:08

    like wait a minute where does the money come from? Uh and without going too deep into excuse me into that. Um, you know, I again always resisted really buying into that myself because I just didn't think it would, uh, you know, turn out and, you know, it didn't. Um, but we've always really been focused on trying to be self- sustainable. And, uh, you know, this is like web 3 has uh, desensitized

81. 35:39

    us to how things work. Like very few spaces in the world exist where it's like, hey, I have this idea, pay me for it. Um, and again, there's there's some chicken and egg things, too, because this is a very nuanced and layered kind of discussion because you do have to incentivize builders um, especially builders that do end up proving um, themselves within the ecosystem and you risk losing them to other chains that

82. 36:03

    are more uh, supportive uh, for for for lack of better words. And it's been difficult for me sometimes to be able to properly elecute uh some of those issues because as an individual um I've felt very supported most of the time. Um and that's not anything that is lost on me and I'm incredibly grateful. Um, but some of the other uh things that maybe haven't been supported as well affects me directly and not just my token token

83. 36:37

    price, but it affects our ability to be able to be self- sustaining because you can't be a pillar in an ecosystem. You can't be a foundational part of near city if the rest of the town's people have, you know, disappeared. So um that's kind of what we're looking to hopefully be able to align with further as you know we look to this different renaissance is how can we be that vehicle how can we be that outlet that sandbox for um new users new creators new developers and you know really be a

84. 37:09

    service and an extension of near and uh be part of realizing that bigger vision which for me has um always led me to believe in what we are doing here ultimately. Yep. Yeah, Monza, I want to pivot a little bit to the content piece of this and getting people excited to organically make content about something and obviously here we're trying to focus on Near, but just like in general, I

85. 37:40

    mean, what has been the approach for you to get people excited enough that they want to participate um just in general of the the whole voice of of the chain. Yeah. So, I think we'll just start with this, like if you have if you have products that are fun and people like to use and they're using them all the time, I think naturally they're going to make content about them. So, like for gaming, for example, right? Like if there was a

86. 38:09

    if there was a really fun game to play on Near and it could Kade says this all the time too, right? like spear on here. It could just be something that you sit and play on the toilet. But if I can make a five minute video about that and post it and other people are playing the game and engage with like people are going to make content about the things that they use. So it starts with you know having a lot of things for people

87. 38:30

    to use on the chain and I think I think we're getting there right like the near intense stuff is cool. Community projects are starting to put out a lot of stuff like we had Shih Tzu and meme.cooking cooking for a while. That was they they they were going crazy for a little bit and we were doing the 10bot dow streams and you know we were making content every night but you know then I feel like after redacted and I think you guys can speak to this too like Near

88. 38:53

    kind of lost we just we just all lost connection right like the community didn't really know what Nar was doing near didn't really know what the community was doing and for a few months there we were just kind of like in a limbo and now like the community is excited again just like kind of naturally because they see what Near is doing and there's a a focused message and they have something just something to look at, something to make content about. And then, you know, you have

89. 39:19

    Kaido Kaido, which is fine. Like I I don't get too much excited too excited about Kaido. Maybe that's just me because I only have 62 yaps and Jay will tweet once a month and he gets like 15 yaps every uh everyone that he gets. So like Kaido is whatever. People get excited about it. People are tweeting. What gets me a little bit more excited is like the the RIA campaign with Kaido, right? Where

90. 39:48

    they're not exactly using Kaido's data, but they're using that to leverage people making content about their project. So right, he is putting up 150K. They're rewarding people that are making content about their project, but they're not just saying we're looking at the Kaido Kaido leaderboard. They're they're looking at all the content being made, you know, did it get views, was it educational, can they repurpose it for

91. 40:12

    all this other stuff. So, those campaigns get me a little bit more excited. And then we have the content hackathon, too, which is just directly rewarding creators on near, giving them bounties, giving them what we want to see content made on, make content on this. We've got our prizes. You make good content, you you're probably going to get rewarded for it. And we just yeah we just finished all of our uh Ner

92. 40:36

    bounties which is good and thank you for that. A lot of help on the ecosystem side on that. But also let's let me take I want to like talk about Kaido real quick and some other content ideas and like it's so hard because it is a chicken egg thing and like in web 2 world people can be tech reviewers and there's a carrot at the end which is influencer and they'll make a living at it. Right? So there's some so there's

93. 40:58

    people between there and there. Now here's Kaido and rhyme. I'm I'm down to have a conversation. I think alone it's not maybe going to be the silver bullet people hope it is. However, as part of like a it's a very like you still have to like it can get people maybe it can be like a little gasoline to get people in but then there's got to be so much more to keep them there. Like it's got to be like oh I'm going to go use Kaido to try to get some rewards and then they're like oh actually there's this

94. 41:23

    dope game. Okay, I'll I'll play it. Even though I don't think a ton of that's going to happen but I think it could start with that way. And when you align it with a project and keep in mind we'll see the data after all this and we'll be able to like follow up like my personal opinion is maybe less important as the data. So that'll be interesting to see.

95. 41:39

    So once that's all run I can't wait to dive into that. Yeah. And I think to a couple of those points I mean Amanza the consistent theme and we used to talk about was shared experiences and having people giving something for people to be a part of. as as for KO, I think it's it's like any other tool and any other marketing uh campaign. It's it's just it's a piece. It's a component. It's a complimentary piece. Uh what turns me

96. 42:08

    off on things like that um because in this space we have a tendency to uh really drink the Kool-Aid of the flavor of the moment and then think this is the beall endall. And then um you know we talk about having to play the game um and we seem to have like somebody switch like the playbook with the Washington Generals uh sometimes. So uh little Harlem Globe Trotters reference there. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie that I didn't I didn't catch that one.

97. 42:42

    I'm sure Joe did. Joe might have. But I got it. Yeah, my sports references are very minimal. I got uh the sports the sports and ra the sports and rap references are for are for Joe. Thank you. Uh for for future for future reference. Um but no like and but you but as you were talking about uh about earlier Jared like or about have things to do and then to Monza's point uh content creators are just going to naturally create content about the things that they gravitate to. And um going back to that chicken and egg thing

98. 43:15

    with campaigns with things like KO right now um and as it pertains to Near and the way things stand um we need more things to make content about right because like infra is not fun content and there's still plenty of those type of content creators but if you're talking about like being able to strategically cultivate vibes and cultivate a community of of people and users. uh it's really important to be able to transcend that and I think that

99. 43:47

    does need to be kind of fixed and some foundational pieces um put in place and uh to be able to make those things more effective and sustaining in the future because otherwise what we're going to see is just these you know quick burns and they're gone and then it becomes Haley's comment and then we have to wait for the next meta that somebody else creates and to jump on and then relate to and you know again we've got the

100. 44:11

     Washington general's playbook Exactly. Yeah. Um, so here's something I want to like I I think you're hitting on some good points and I want to think about like when I think of crypto in general, right? It's been a B2B space for so long where it's all just been infra connected with infra.

101. 44:26

     How does how do we incorporate these projects with each other? And it's still there's still an infra B2B which is traditionally like maybe not the most exciting content people like because like there's a lot of web two projects that are just B2B that that do numbers that no one sees. But now there's something very interesting a B TOC where you're this consumer content is going to be much different. You know what I mean?

102. 44:47

     And that's where I think it's got to be like a bit more engaging. It's got like lifestyle stuff. Like I think that's where the kind of content will be going now as the whole entire space starts to kind of build more applications. The whole world. Yeah. The whole world. I mean, the the White House is posting on like the White House Twitter account. Like, the overtone window is obliterated, does not exist, never going back. And that doesn't mean again um to sell out on degeneracy, but it does mean

103. 45:20

     to have a pulse of the moment of the current culture that you exist in in a micro and then the larger culture in a macro and then being able to essentially apply your own kind of authentic sauce uh to that recipe and you know rather than trying to be able to replicate like you can't you can't fake authenticity and that's what people gravitate to whether it's brands, um, whether it's

104. 45:46

     games, whether it's communities, like that's ultimately what it is. And then creating these these shared experiences. And I'm trying to get this train back because I had one specific point that I really wanted uh wanted to make and I'm losing it. And oh, I'm so mad at myself right now, dude. You're that that's just happens.

105. 46:06

     You're doing you're you're crushing great knowledge. But yeah, we're trying to find some of these links. But Joe, what do you think? I got it. I came back. I came back. Sideline Brook. Um, no. I I think we're still I think we are still in that B2B state, but it's not B2B and infra. It's B2B as in what are these other distribution models that are encompassing the infra to apps to consumers. Um, you know, I hate you overusing uh the music festival parallels and just

106. 46:41

     the music industry parallels, but I do I think they're so appropriate so often because they are so similar um and being in both um for a significant amount of time and having plenty of overlap now like it just it kind of continue reinforces those similarities. And something that Salana has done very well and Coinbase has done um very well in the past is they've gone into these cultural spaces and they have you know they they're building these B2B models

107. 47:10

     with someone like a Live Nation or uh somebody on these cultural uh sides of these businesses that have a huge network of consumers and then using that their B2B as a distribution. I know that that's redundant, but uh like that is the difference between trying to sell to another tech vis business versus trying to sell culture. And we're forgetting that as we're selling tech, we are

108. 47:38

     undebatably selling culture as well. And until we understand that as a whole, either as an industry or as an individual chain, we will always be playing from behind. Nice. Joe, what what what I like hearing your ideas on content, too, because you're you know, like you're doing a lot of dev stuff behind the scenes, but you're always we we definitely have some content conversations. You're you're in it. Yeah.

109. 48:03

     Um, it's it's it's a complicated time because everyone wants content tailored to themselves and and that includes devs and devs are not always the same and they're not and you're starting to see a change. Uh, and this is going to come off as probably just the stereotypic with everything else nowadays, but like the generational divide is really a big difference of where they're trying to

110. 48:33

     get their content from and where younger generations definitely want more video. Uh, definitely want things explained a little bit more there and that they can kind of do step by step by step. And then you still have though a whole another generation that is is not really ready for that and still wants just docs and still wants like just type that word. And with AI like you want type that word because I want to feed that into my AI system. And

111. 49:00

     so there is this push and pull right now for developer content of like which category are you serving? Who are you trying to serve? And then on top of all that like everything is moving so fast. I mean, stuff that I made three months ago is almost outdated already, and that's hard to then keep up with. So, it's something where uh I love the idea of getting the community more involved because they can stay on top of trends

112. 49:28

     and you can really distribute, you know, the weight of some of the stuff much better where I'd rather the community do 12 videos on a topic and be 90% of the way there and then it says, "Okay, we need someone from like Deell to actually come in and do the last 10%. you know, make one short video, you know, because that that just changes how you approach the rest of this because you just can't do it all.

113. 49:58

     Yeah, agree. I I I like that. What do you think, Ryan? You unmuted or No, I mean, no, I I I mean, I do agree and I I think that we get lost in it being an eitheror thing and it's really a synergist and complimentary thing. Uh the problem is is whenever you go too hard uh on one side or the other and you drown out that again it's it's a dichotomy. It's a tech and cultural tech and culture go hand in hands. Um and it

114. 50:28

     doesn't matter how many nerds tell you it doesn't. Um they're wrong. Like the world never stops operating like a high school and everyone's trying to find the best party. And you know that doesn't mean project X. That means they're trying to find their tribe. They're trying to find their community. They're trying to find their best experience.

115. 50:48

     And one thing that we know from high school is um the computer nerds don't usually throw the best parties. Um but they can give us the best tricks and the best tools and the best things that we can be able to use and to be able to stream our music and to being able to fix our light show and to being able to to run our backend financial systems and everything else. And those all of those

116. 51:13

     things work together. Like people would be amazed at the tech that goes on behind I I mean what operating a grocery store, operating a music festival. These are all like very consumer oriented businesses that are like live and buy live and die by the tech that they use.

117. 51:29

     But they also live and die by the community and the people that they serve. And going back to these music industry um parallels is uh you know you have a lot of artists and I've worked with many throughout the years is they're always looking at you know what can I get from my audience you know what can I what can I do so do so that they'll give me things and it's like you're already losing with that mindset because ultimately like if you want to be an artist if you want to be in the

118. 51:59

     music business like there is a business if you want to be an artist in your room that's fine And there is nothing expectation of reciprocity um for your efforts. But like if you want to be in the business, the business is a service and it's a service to those consumers and to those people and to those fans.

119. 52:16

     And that's what we are needing to create is we're needing to create more super fans of brands, super fans of these missions and super fans of these ideas. And you do that by stimulating a culture. Like Donald Trump's not in office because he has the best ideas.

120. 52:33

     He's in office because he's got the best hats. Yeah. No, I I I think I think you're you're spot on with a lot of that. Um I will push back a little bit is I threw some sick raers in college, so I might be Joe was quite the Joe, you're my you're my old head rapper friend. You're like, dude. Yeah.

121. 52:53

     So someday not on this podcast or this details from college. I I can throw back in the day. We gota we gota Yeah, we got to share those. Uh I do want to as you know as we're coming up on the hour I do want to spend some time though um and this is definitely big time alpha that we've hinted towards. Uh so uh there is a hackathon coming that is content focused uh and it is on the brand new site Ner. Uh this will be live soon that

122. 53:26

     everyone will be able to kind of go to and ner is a place where anyone can go and earn ner earn hence that um and it really is an opportunity here to be better involved in the ecosystem actually maybe make a little bit money. Any project can use this. Anyone can make a bounty. Uh it's not restricted to just you know like the foundation or devop or anything else like that. Anyone can come on here and make a sponsorship.

123. 53:52

     But we do want to give everyone a sneak preview of what this is. And maybe Monza, you want to talk a little bit about the heckathon? I just want to like say a couple things real quick and then Monza, you take this over. I want to say right now this is a like a rough page like some of the numbers aren't right on that and everything. So don't think that this is you're seeing like a work in progress thing. So just want to make sure that is there. But uh we're figuring out like prizes and all that.

124. 54:16

     We have a pretty good gauge on that. But like those numbers aren't accurate right now. Just wanted to like shout that out. We're trying to figure out some stuff on the back end on how to show the right things. So, it's kind of building as we're going. But, yeah, Monza, jump in.

125. 54:27

     Give it a Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I mean, for sure. Like you said, it's not nothing on here is official. And all the uh even the stuff over here on the right isn't isn't completely finalized yet, but you know, here is the uh the product or project. You know, we're launching it through Ner, which is going to be launching the You've been using it, right Joe? For for DevHub stuff for a while. So, yeah, we we've been dog fooding it for a little bit here. Yeah. So it will be fully live next week.

126. 54:52

     Yeah. So launch that's launching at the same time as the hackathon. So excited about that. Just, you know, a place where projects themselves can put up their own bounties, creators can put up their own bounties. Anyone is going to be able to, you know, put up their bounty, show exactly what you want. You can see over here like for the uh content hackathon, we we're looking for

127. 55:10

     short form video content. We're going to be giving you projects that we're looking for content on, the type of content we want to see from those projects. So, you know, like Ria, me cooking, meteor wallet, walk, give us walkthroughs on those. Give me give us a a master video of all the wallets. Just break down the video, the wallets, man.

128. 55:27

     There's like, you know, there's a wallet page. Just go and, you know, break them down. Absolutely. Stuff like that. It's we we can get pretty pretty basic with it. We can get pretty crazy with it. You know, we're we're looking for everything here and everything and anything. You know, near near needs all the content and these projects are also also all looking for content. So, that was the community vertical. So, we're going to be that's that's focusing on ecosystem projects like we talked about like these

129. 55:51

     uh OGs and projects that have been here building you know not not directly related to near but you know near projects. So like I said Shih Tzu Black Dragon Elliot's building crossost slime's building some cool stuff you know all those projects we want to wanted to highlight them so they all gave us the type of content they're looking for. We're going to throw that in there and then you're also going to be able to make content about basically any other near project you want. So, I

130. 56:16

     think we're linking the trending page on your catalog. We'll kind of clean that up a little bit. Go through there. That page should have all the information that you need on any project to uh to make some good content about it. And then we also have the near intense vertical, which is we've got separate prize pools for both. There's going to be 10K up for grabs, 5K for each vertical. This one's going to focus just on near intense projects. So, Kyber

131. 56:39

     swap, Infinex, you know, give us tutorials, how to sign up, how to use it, cool things you can do, and then uh explain to us what Near Intense is, you know, why it excites you, any anything like that. That's what this vertical is focusing on. So, you got anything, Jared? Oh, man. You you you crushed it.

132. 56:57

     The main thing it's just like this is like the first of a hopefully many more contact hackathons. And what we're trying to do is align this like this is the first just like let's do ecosystem let's do near intense but as time goes on it's like how can a bunch of people like Joe said everybody said it's better to have a bunch of people make videos than one person make a ton of videos right like in my mind it's like let's get the whole community and hopefully if you know people who are making content that you

133. 57:21

     think would be good fits too we can like start bringing in more content creators right having place where you know you've got content aligned with community and ecosystem and then you've got black dragon and stuff is just kind of bringing a lot more of that energy in for the ecosystem to do stuff and like really just support, you know, like there's a lot of talented people out there. I want to start, you know, focusing that way, you know?

134. 57:43

     Yeah. Lot a lot of cool people creating a lot of cool stuff on here right now. So, give them an opportunity to get rewarded that isn't that isn't just KO or Kaido, however you say it, you know, not just looking for yaps, but an actual bounty like make us a video on this right here. So, we're judging these. So, this is the thing. So let's let's just So the bounties what what the bounties

135. 58:03

     are kind of like the prizes is how it's set on Ner, right? So it's not like Yeah. So we're going to be have we're going to have eight judges. I think Ryme, you're a judge, right? Like you know we got some judges happening on here. Me Monza, are you judging? You going judge? See, we got three judges on here. Joe, you're not judging until we do a dev focused one. That's the goal that we start focusing this content fire hose in directions that need content

136. 58:27

     that we have the skilled people who can do it. let's focus it and help align it. So, hell yeah, that'll be cool. Um, so we'll be judging it and giving out prizes and you know it'll launch on the 11th. It's the 25th is like the deadline and there's some really cool things to like sign up and we also have some cool stuff on the back end using uh curate fun and crossost which I was I've been diving into those projects too. Pretty cool stuff. Oh, that's gonna be What day? What day is it Monza? What number?

137. 58:55

     Uh day as far as asking mirror protocol to use open crossost. What are we on? I think we're on day 12 right now. Keep it going. We'll get there. Keep keep begging, guys. No, that's not I didn't mean that. Red circus. What is what is crossbows for people who don't know? I mean, we had just clear, we had, if you want to go back to previous DevHub lives, we had Elliot on here to talk about it and break it down.

138. 59:26

     Um, but just kind of high level, what what is uh Crossbow Monza? I'm giving that one to Ry, bro. Rhymes on stream with Elliot all the time. Yeah, here's what I I makes a video on crossost and curate fun because I do think they work well together. Elliot just did a deep dive with me like two days ago and I'm like, "Oh, I see the light now." So now I'm starting to like level with it. What did the light tell

139. 59:52

     you when you saw it? So here's where I think curate fun is is like where the light bulb hit, right? There's going to be a lot like just organizing lots of content like it individuals. You can create lists. You can have stuff kind of come in there and then you can sort of like figure out how to share it and do other things like that on one level. And I think it will be able to amplify

140. 1:00:15

     content at a level that one person alone can't do. And you're relying on that. And uh I think that's like an interesting aspect. I'm still trying to figure out how the crossost works with the curate fund. You know, he's helping me understand that. But yeah, the curate fund's a cool thing because it's allowing you to curate your own feed essentially or for different groups to be able to organize their own feed. And it's not dissimilar to the Twitter lists

141. 1:00:40

     where uh you can pick and choose who you want to see and being able to organize it based on uh whatever that topic or or group is. So uh essentially it's it's a web three platform very familiar to other uh similar ones where you're able to uh post to multiple platforms from that one being able to manage uh some of your social media flow. And then something that we know is you don't actually own your content that is on these platforms. So if you haven't taken the proper uh precautions to back your

142. 1:01:15

     things up, goodness, should anything happen. Uh this is a way for you to be able to uh archive your content and essenti. I can back up everything on this like as the ones that you use them from what I understand. Oh, but I I was like, can I take all my past posts over the years and just like drop it in there as like a that that might be that might be a trick that Elliot would would be better off

143. 1:01:41

     answering. Okay, cool. I'm like that's cool. But nice. And also one other thing that he told me that I didn't understand. So I thought like when you when you connect your account to a thirdparty product, you're giving them readwrite access, right? Like you're giving them some pretty serious control of your account so they can actually post for you. So that but then Elliot was saying that like there's a secondary sort of safety net which is actually having the the

144. 1:02:05

     near wallet connected to it. So you're kind of almost like safer than using like a buffer or something like that. Like a buffer there is no safety net and with at least curate fun you have the wallet there too. So that was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine that was probably a a priority and core idea from from the beginning just knowing Elliot. I do think that like connecting an account to a third party is always like I'm I'm very hesitant to do that, but like after him explaining

145. 1:02:32

     it, I'm like, "Okay." Yeah. Maybe we just need like 30 straight days of of tweets and then the near account will finally just get annoyed with us and they will uh the intern will give in. I I feel like the intern's just playing with us at this point, honestly. just like seeing how long we'll go, how how far will they go?

146. 1:02:56

     I don't know. There's no insurance to janitor, man. There a big difference there. I wish I wish I wish I knew I wish I knew who these people were and their avatars and anonymity remain a mystery to me. Me too. last name. Well, on that note, uh gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me and coming on DevHub Live episode 50. Uh and and hopefully uh we continue to kind of see a lot of growth out of the near

147. 1:03:26

     ecosystem to get this pumped up. I'm excited for the content hackathon. I definitely want to when we have some winners of those bounties, we should actually do something here on DevHub and get those videos out and content out and show all that off. Um, but that's where Curate Fun comes in. I'm telling you, it's it's a pretty dope platform, man.

148. 1:03:44

     It's got some like legs on it for sure. Nice. Uh, before we go, just uh last we'll give it the last word to everybody. Uh, whoever wants to go first, promote anything. Like I said, the content hackathon is launching next week. Just uh get ready, get excited.

149. 1:04:03

     I'm excited to see what people uh what people cook up. If you got any uh any questions on that, you can reach out to me. I'm the community lead on that. So, I'll be answering questions. I'll be uh I'll be in the trenches there with you uh helping promote your content, getting it uh getting it out there, getting it, making sure you get it submitted and everything. So, any questions about that, just reach out to me. We'll uh we'll get things right.

150. 1:04:27

     Perfect. Right. Never ever fade the dragon. There you go. And and yeah, that was good. Um I think for me it's it's never I think Ryan you said something earlier and it's not either or. And I think this is like the biggest thing that I believe in that foundation ecosystem community node project founder builder. I don't I think we're all in this together, right? Like I think like it's we all have like a a north star. like we're we're trying to like build in a place that like we

151. 1:04:59

     hopefully will like be user owned and we'll be able to have digital ownership and you know it won't it like it's kind of counterculture in that way which I really like that we're going for it and it's not either or. We're all in it together. Let's just like support each other. I'm liking where the vibes are going. Let's just keep leaning into like that and I I hope that's where it keeps

152. 1:05:15

     going. Oh, and content hackathon. Make sure you join. I'm excited. There's gonna be some content on that. We're gonna have Marcus coming on. We're gonna have some cool stuff. Nice. Nice. Nice. Well, uh, awesome time. I really appreciate everybody coming on. Also, thanks to Owen for coming on as well, talking about shade agents, stuff like that. Uh, if you haven't subscribed to the DevHub newsletter, please do so.

153. 1:05:35

     Link has been scrolling down below the whole time. Hopefully, you got it. If you want to build something or you're interested in just developing on Near, check out our docs, join our Telegram group. We will be there as well for you.

154. 1:05:45

     Uh, until next week, I'm your host Joe. Thanks everyone for showing up and we will see you then. Bye, folks. Thanks for having us. Thanks.