NEAR Protocol Town Hall June 2022 W/ Mila Kunis!

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

1. 0:32

   uh hello and welcome to our june 2022 near town hall we promise you it's gonna be big this one is very big we're in consensus and super happy to be here it's actually incredible to see the number of builders and the number of companies that are here and we're super excited to actually share with you some of the best things that have been happening at near over the last 12 months what's coming up and

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   some of our recent announcements so what are we going to actually cover today where part one is actually going to be uh evie and myself anina it's great to have you it's been a while since you haven't been on the town hall so um myself are going to look at you know last 12 months and and last six months what's been happening on near and in the ecosystem and what's coming up after that next we'll have jack our new cmo uh introduce and present some of the

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   biggest news that we've been sharing here at consensus and it's been big and we're super proud of the announcements that have come up that have come on up next up we'll actually look at upcoming events because yes uh today we're in consensus but actually there's so many super cool events that are coming up one in particular near khan put that and mark that in your agenda it's coming up it's in lisbon it's going to be in

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   september and next after that we wanted to share with you actually some of the behind the scenes of consensus our team has been on the ground interviewing quite a few people and we'll share insights into what's going on at near but also behind the scenes in consensus the last part of the town hall is probably the thing that we're actually most excited about we told you this one was going to be big and it is very big

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   we have mila kunis joining us to share actually how and why she's excited about armor kingdom and what it means for near now i'm gonna hand over to ilya so that he can actually share with you the last 12 months out near and what's coming up great let's dive in into the state of near ecosystem but before that i want to remind everyone the mission that nir has is a world where people

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   have control of their data assets and power governance it's really about users and people in the world in general to be in control to be able to have a voice to have low switching costs between any platform and any provider an open web world and to achieve that we need to build a next generation platform we need an infrastructure that can power this that can be accessible and simple to use for billions of users and millions of developers it needs to be scalable enough to handle

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   trillions of transactions and ability to really not crumble under load when billions of users are actually actively using it and it needs to be secure it needs to be not just protect on economic security that blockchains already do but be able to protect the user and an investor from any kind of malicious activity and this is what nier is trying to build but beyond that we need to be sustainable we have you know the most non-fungible

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   asset we have is our planet and it's really important to continuously push on sustainability and on how we can kind of continue improve our planet state near is really proud to be climate neutral i'm partnering with south pole and it's really exciting to see a number of projects who are building a new ecosystem to invest this mission of sustainability in the near future is billions of users and you know our audacious goal is to bring one billion users and we actually since the launch of maintenance 18 months ago are one

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   percent complete uh as you can see we are accelerating the growth of the user bases continuously accelerating thanks to a lot of the applications a lot of partners and a lot of you uh coming into to the ecosystem just to kind of highlight over the past 12 months we had over 600 projects in the system and so developers builders that are coming in that are building something exciting over 500 000 people joined our

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    community which i'm welcome everyone uh we had as i said tremendous growth over 6 000 percent grows in past 12 months in the number of accounts and we hope we hope to sustain this rate of growth in coming years number transactions but more importantly we're one of the biggest developer ecosystems and and the fastest one of the fastest growing uh bringing like over 2 500 developers building every day and we see that continuously going even with all

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    the events past few months so it's really exciting the ecosystem is growing faster than ever and we welcome everyone to continuously build and bring people to the platform now the ecosystem has been evolving um a year ago when we launched it was just near protocol and near foundation and over past 12 months we actually had a number of kind of entities companies projects that are appearing that are building that are

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    providing core pieces of the ecosystem and kind of the three main categories right is the infrastructure pieces that are really built around near protocol as an open source project it's go to market and kind of eco-fund which is what you know near foundation kind of kick-started but now we have a lot of other pieces in the ecosystem and obviously the applications kind of across different verticals kind of

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    majorly grouped in d5 great economy and kind of social digital cooperatives the protocol has been evolving right there's a reason why we're called near and one of them is you know we're never perfect and it's always about progress it's always about uh kind of iterating and innovating and so over the past 12 months the protocol actually had 19 protocol upgrades that actually happened on a network without skipping a beat

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    the focus of the team has been on stability and performance it's been focusing on how to make sure that network continuously running under any circumstances and that the performance of each chart which smart contract is improving specifically the web assembly the basis of our kind of smart contract platform of our execution environment has had a major performance improvement which allowed for things like aurora but even more interestingly it allowed for things like javascript now i'll talk a little bit more about it

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    and at the same time a simple night shade right the first step toward kind of our rotor shutting road map has been launched and now we approach in the second step the global shortening sharding road map right for near always been to launch in steps and we kind of split it into four major phases uh with a phase zero being a you know running sharded network but still requiring everyone to validate it and so it's launched in november 2021 uh which was super exciting and importantly

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    it had zero impact on developers or users right we're running charted network and no user needs to know about anything what's going on under the hood the next step is coming in september and really excited about it because it allows to extend number of validators it's kind of kicks in the next phase of of our of our shutting for our knight shade and obviously the kind of following phase is turning off the

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    block producers which are validating every single shard and turning on the challenge is pretty much going into a fully charted mode that can continuously scale with number of shards beyond that we still have the dynamic resharding which is what truly will enable kind of scaling with the demand right right now to change number of shards you need the governance vote you need validators to come together but with dynamic resharding we're going to have a fully automatic way of scaling

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    the network now the there is no launch without testing and it's has been one of the most important pieces kind of relaunching we want to have a big kind of community gathering for for those battle tests so we're going to be launching new stakeholders if you've been around the new ecosystem you probably heard of it in 2020 in 2021 but this is a stakehouse three this is about testing chunk only producers this is about kind of amassing a lot more validators and a lot of more participants on this

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    network so join uh you can sign up at near.org decentralize it's about battle testing it's about kind of pushing the limits of what near near infrastructure can do now zooming out of near protocol there's a number of other infrastructure providers right that are in ecosystem that are building and kind of to highlight few we have pagoda which is a new web3 startup platform calimera which is the private chart

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    and they're building a number of ins very important projects near being focused on developer experience being focused on bringing the developers the from the start we were trying to figure out how to bring the most known language the programming language that i think over 18 million developers know javascript to the platform we had some approaches before but with the performance improvement with kind of what we've developed in the past year

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    we were able to achieve a fully compatible javascript running in on near with smart contracts what this means is any javascript developer any web developer can now come in and build on near infrastructure and this is really exciting because we'll see lots and lots of experimentation happening we obviously had a number of major improvements to rust sdks to testing frameworks to kind of all the developer tooling

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    we've seen infura and metamask launching as well support um for near to provide developers better tooling and really exciting kind of evolution of frameworks that people are using to consume data from new infrastructure i'm also really excited to see kind of the education platforms that are being kind of growing on in your ecosystem new university being one of the drivers on boarding more and more developers teaching them how to build how to transition from web 2 and

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    getting certified developer program going kind of onboarding people who actually know how to build on the ecosystem so a number of infrastructure providers i mean there's a number more like not everything fits in the slide but kind of all this is really building the basis building the foundation of the new infrastructure at the same time interoperability being one of the major pieces we've been involved from the start and it started with rainbow bridge with

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    ability to connect to ethereum his ability to connect other chains it expanded to aurora with support of evm with support for developers who are building on ethereum ecosystem to come in and easily launch engineer and at the same time to bring app change to bring a application specific side chains which are needed to build very specific use cases which can connect directly to neuric systems through octopus network there's a number of more interpretability

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    projects in the works which not live yet and really exciting to see and invite everyone to continue expanding on this now we're not just decentralizing the development we're not just decentralizing the platform we're also decentralizing the funding right near foundation started as kind of a beacon ecosystem in the ecosystem but it continuously evolving and continuously uh kind of pushing the functionality to the ecosystem itself to to become sustainable to become uh

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    long-term viable and so kind of an important piece being distributing funding uh creating eco funds in the ecosystem that are able to find the best developers and fund them and support them and so there's a number of verticals where there's now specialized groups working on it to name a few proximity being a huge driver of finance or defy of finance in the new ecosystem working across a lot

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    of projects helping them helping build missing pieces and then helping them launch them we have human guild that been working directly with game developers giving them grants to get them started helping them launch help them with talking economics we have a number of eco funds like move like medivab and we have a number of other verticals starting up sustainability and creator economy being just to name a few

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    now the kind of vertical distribution and decentralization is important but the other important aspect is geography the to be a truly global ecosystem we need to be local we need to be present we need to be everywhere and near community is everywhere already and to really celebrate it and concentrate the regional hubs are being built around the world we already have a few launched in china in balkans in kenya

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    and sadly ukrainian hub which got relocated to portugal but the the whole ecosystem is continuously evolving a number of hubs are coming uh across the world and you know if you want to be part of this please reach out to us the goal is really to have local presence local events and community have local funding and people who understand the market to truly bring the values of nir to truly surface the power that this web 3 and new

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    infrastructure can provide going back to the verticals right there is a specific kind of crater economy triangle that we've been talking about and to just surface a little bit of examples right there is kind of a creator economy that really is the source of new value is a place where creators and people can come in it's you know across music and art it's gaming it's all of the ways people try to expose their creativity and uh

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    obviously exciting to see armor kingdom here there's a number of games that are launching and check out human guild's video uh form kind of for a full-fledged demos and at the same time the nfts is what backs it right nfts is a technology and we have a number of nft marketplaces and a number of nft kind of projects power in that that creativity is what kind of onboards more people this onboarding becomes social right we see a lot more social kind of been built around greater

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    communities as well as other communities for example orange dab is an exciting development of you know developers and founders coming and forming a doubt to kind of learn from each other to form projects to continuously develop and all that you know is using dow tooling but at the end it's actually a social interaction and social ecosystem and social and creator is then turns into finance at the end the fi the this kind of economy is what makes um you know makes us attractive and interested for people to

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    join and so there's a finance side uh there's a lot of tooling that needed that bridges uh traditional finance and uh crypto and as well as old and crypto native applications have been built now this all is great but it's been missing one piece and the piece is to bring users to bring users who are not yet in the ecosystem who are not yet in crypto and this is where things like

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    aurora plus right ability to transact without fees sweatcoin tracer near crowd ability to earn while doing work or while moving while doing something being able to onboard into the ecosystem became extremely important and so this is how this creator economy is continuously expanding who is bringing more and more users from the top now this is where we are where we're going is actually building more and more very concrete protocols that are delivering on what kind of web 2 right

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    now has and web3 is struggling this is social graph this is gig protocol reputation content certification all of the things that right now are still living in web 2 are still controlled by centralized party this is the data you use every day that does not belong to you kind of you sign the permissions off this whole protocols are coming they will be enabling a new slew of use cases and of

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    composibility and beyond the use cases there's a lot of research that's happening on how do we secure the user how do we protect the user how do we um define that you you are not lost all your assets if you lost your seat phrase how do we do better ai ai is becoming an important piece of our life and it needs to be community governed beyond that how the governance would work and how we achieve privacy blockchains are transparency engines we need i'll think a lot more about privacy

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    and kind of as a beyond research for uh kind of as we finish out with dynamic charting we are thinking more about how we can create a more even more scalable sharding with synchronicity so there's a lot of exciting things um probably not gonna finish all of this in a year but we're gonna make a tremendous progress and i'm inviting everyone to contribute to this and now i want to pass it to mariek to highlight some of the successes of the ecosystem so following up on the presentation

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    avilia of an overview of the last 12 months and what's coming up what i'm going to share actually with you now is actually a deep dive into what's been happening in the ecosystem over the last let's say five and a half months almost six months so what happened in january well in january i joined best decision ever loving every day of it and in january we actually also announced our first trench of the

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    fundraise for 150 million from some top-class investors january was also a month where we actually saw a lot of rise in the creator economy of nir paris for example reached 5 million in trading volume and had its first project reaching 1 million in trading volume with the anti-social ape club play to earn was definitely a trend in the months of january and we saw some super exciting new games such as for example crypto heroes and land to empire

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    now last but not least one of the things we actually wanted to highlight for the months of january was the first ever proof-of-stake storage solution with makina built on near let's look at february ferry was definitely marked by eat denver which was an amazing event and a lot of you were probably actually there at eat denver we announced pagoda the world's first web3 started platform

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    time ago launched as one of the first streaming platform on near and if there is one trend that actually we can say for the months of february is that it was an nft month near tracker dot io actually entered near and is a platform that enables us to start tracking more and more of the data of what's happening on the nft side near knots entered an exclusive partnership with ref allowing holders to actually start staking their

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    nfts one of the first of its kind pushing the envelope of what's possible speaking of define we saw more and more partnerships such as ref and spin and a couple of very exciting fundraisers from ref and origami both from very high quality investors now last but not least near social launched their beta platform bringing one of the first social networks to near let's go on and look at

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    march while a lot of positive news happen in the ecosystem it's true to say that in our hearts and minds march will remain forever dark months and the war in ukraine was and remains a shock it was phenomenal to see actually how quickly the near community rallied along the side of unchained fund which kicked off and raised a ton of money we actually raised over 10 million across

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    14 different crypto currencies half of that was from near a huge thank you to the community for the contribution on unchained dow on a positive front we actually announced quite a few partnerships cell gp and orange dial were some of those partnerships not only that but we saw so near pay launched its first beta version kyber swap and bastion launching on aurora and also raising large round from jane strait nir also hit a major milestone in the

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    months of march with over 100 million total transactions april felt like spring definitely a lot of things were up in the air and the ecosystem knew so new flourishing projects like spring flowers borough raised 5 million from dragonfly the antisocial ape club continued their growth and became the first nfe project to actually surpass 200 000 in near in volume flux secured 3 billion in value across near and aurora and ofp formalized the partnership with the

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    ivory coast to restore 20 of their forest the central bank launched usn and not only that but we actually saw winners announced for the metabill hackathon for the first of the quarter congratulations vogue in april we were also in paris and that's where we announced our partnership with swet which already in april had one million wallets being created on there last but not least in april we also announced the second part of the close of our fundraise for 350 million led by

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    tiger global bringing our total fundraise to over half a billion the months of may went from census trans we surpassed 10 million wallets and we're actually currently at 13 million wallet thanks in large part to sweats creating 7 million new wallets in a very short amount of time nir was a claim the fastest growing blockchain with over 3x grows year over year in addresses the months of may also saw our first insurance protocol in sura ace we started launching more and more

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    local regional hubs and kenya was the hub that was launched in may tamago raised a million curved finance integrated with aurora and on the aurora front we actually saw a 90 million fund grants in projects in partnership with proximity and we're now in june it's only a couple of weeks or days actually in the months but it's fair to say that this month is shaping up to be one of our most exciting months we're currently at consensus that we actually shared with you and we have a handful of amazing announcements that

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    jack our nusemo will share with you very shortly not only that but i'm sure you guys have seen we also have fire blocks that's coming up we have apollo 42 which is a beautiful nft new marketplace which is very soon launching and on the community events and side we've had the launch of the balkan region and metapool sponsoring the near hacker house this week in austin whoa so much has happened over the last

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    five and a half months there's a say in crypto that every day feels like wix and it's actually very true it's packed it's actually very exciting and there is a lot of things that are going on we can't wait to see what the next six months will bear and all the great things that actually will be built on here and with that i'm going to hand over to jack our new cmo to share some of the most exciting announcements that we've

51. 25:36

    actually shared here at consensus thank you marieke and hello to everyone i'm hugely excited to be joining the near foundation uh and to play my part in taking web3 to the mainstream um i'm a big believer that centralized structures and organizations don't and have never had people at heart um and i think decentralization puts the power back into people's hands to create a fairer and more inclusive society so since the last four weeks since i've enjoyed it since i've joined i've spent

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    most of my time meeting and listening to people within the ecosystem and beyond including many people here at consensus and what's really struck me is just how passionate vibrant and diverse our ecosystem is and what incredible ideas we have and what stories and journeys that people have been on it's been truly inspiring to listen and to meet so many great great folks within our community so alongside some of the big partnerships that we're doing i think

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    moving forward we'll be accelerating ways in which we can activate our ecosystem and provide better support to our projects part of that will be leveraging all the amazing stories and journeys of our founders developers and community members to inspire more people to join the web3 movement and i'm looking forward to meeting more of you from the ecosystem over the next few weeks now on to the three big announcements that we have released here at consensus okay so on to the first big announcement

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    we're excited to announce a major new entertainment franchise armoured kingdom a new multi-platform global entertainment universe is coming to near to reshape web 3 trading card games digital comics animation and film founders include acclaimed producers and creators including mila kunis who we'll be hearing from later on our panel so sit tight armored kingdom follows several tribes of warring medieval dynasties as they

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    battle for power with the aid of amorite a powerful mysterious metal the armored kingdom team will be launching a series of games and comics that will be built on the near protocol to help bring the new digital economy economy to the masses with our established industry players the second big announcement you've we've been talking about this over the last few months uh is sweat uh i can say that the movement economy is well and truly underway um and we've hit a big

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    milestone um have 10 million wallets opened already on near through through the sweat app it's a huge milestone in bringing web through to the masses and really reinventing how people can generate value for themselves in a move to an economy lastly we're excited to announce that the privacy first browser brave is leveraging aurora to launch its own brave wallet that will bridge the ethereum and near communities this integration will mean that brave users

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    can buy sell and store aurora tokens directly in the brave wallet with the new wallet there'll be a host of web3 functionality supported such as nfts and swaps all of which will be in the protection of the privacy preserving in-browser wallet all of these announcements are incredibly important for the future advancement of web3 and mass adoption and i'm really excited uh to be able to announce them here at consensus now i'm hanging over to you deera who

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    will be walking us through our upcoming events including more exciting information on our flagship event nikon hi everyone my name is yudira i lead events here at near foundation it's been a thrilling week being in austin for consensus tons of people here and i'm really thrilled to also fill you in on two big events that are coming up into this next quarter so first up we have near cotton we'll be doubling down

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    in size this year and we'll be activating from september 12th through the 14th this year we're going to the waterfront we'll be at a gorgeous warehouse just across the street from time out one thing i'd like to call out is that we've opened the call for speakers so head to nericon.org and get your application submitted we'll be featuring everything from protocol news upgrades updates dev technical workshops

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    everything from regulation to governance to sustainability and more so definitely get your submissions asap and we'll go ahead and be in paris this july so for those of you who love eathcc we are big fans we will be there again this year last year nero was a sponsor this year aurora will be sponsoring alex shivshank will be hosting a session on one of their stages and the near

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    ecosystem will be putting together a co-working lounge similar to what we did at youth denver but with the parisian flair we'll be within walking distance from the my son venue which is where eat cc is traditionally held and here you'll be able to break away from the hustle and bustle go ahead and grab a coffee refuel connect with other nyrians and maybe join one of the curated sessions that we'll be hosting that's it so we'll go ahead and see you

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    in paris this july and now i hand it over to david morrison who will give you a behind the scenes look at what's happening here on the ground at consensus hi everyone i'm here at austin texas at consensus 2022 i am joined by the main man himself ilya the founder of near protocol how are you doing elia it's not bad yeah it's a busy day but um pretty exciting there's a bit of a market downturn right now but people tend to

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    say that that's the best time to build so what are you excited about coming out of this uh bear market so we call it i mean there are two things one is so we started in like august 2018 so the market at least like generally considered for crypto was going down and continue going down and was going down probably like more and so compared to where we were then right now it's not a bear market at the same time i think the any kind of you know shake-up over correction is always good

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    in a way that it allows people to like focus on long-term focus on you know creating sustainable models creating sustainable businesses so is there any is there any favorite crypto projects that are either here at consensus or aren't that you'd like to shout out uh look i think some of the ones that are really exciting that are working within the near ecosystem that we've actually supported recently are mint based and some of the projects they've been building in the nft space as well as peras which is a secondary marketplace

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    which has been pretty exciting what do you think it is about nia's crypto culture that makes it so inclusive yeah i think i think apart from the the great tech that we have um i think the the welcoming community plays a huge role in that and thanks to you and the work that you're doing on the community side um but also like in general um i think it goes to the culture of what mayor is trying to pay it right both from the foundation perspective as well

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    as like percolating it down to the communities that we're building um and it's also inspiring a lot of people to like play the hand-holding role be the mentor that you've never had in your life i like to think about culture as far as first diversity equity inclusion and access so i think that compared to a lot of other organizations in rep three i found that the near foundation is especially bullish on diversity at

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    conclusion not just as something that you check off of a box but it's really integral to creating a decentralized future why is near the number one place for developers to go and for people to build on top of in order to achieve that vision well for me there's one thing it's usability right and when i think of usability i think like if we truly want mass adoption we need things to be super simple if you look at our sweat integration for example it's just

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    seamless things work and end users don't even have to know that this is based on blockchain can you tell us a little bit more about pagoda what it is that you guys do yeah so lona is a startup platform for web3 right so if you want to come and you want to build a startup or you want to build a certain application we have all the tools for you so if you are a developer you can build your analytics if you want to build an application like come and

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    use our tools and you'll be in the right place so you've been in austin for a little while now can you give us like the top five things you've done in austin or the top two things whatever it might be and you can't just say drink right okay all right now you're probably in a tight particular way i think i'd say number one has been surviving the heat uh number two has definitely been

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    uh going out to all the fantastic eateries around the hospital beautiful places to eat uh definitely meaning fellow here is slap on his time actually meeting people from there it's been incredible um and there's some really good springs and lakes as well so definitely check those out if you are in austin as well so what is it that made you pick near foundation right because there's tons of projects up yeah sure near's the real deal right it's the the right tech it's

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    got the right people it's got the right long-term vision um and and i found that really exciting right it's making the the projects out there um can bring their ideas to life uh in a simple seamless scalable way and you know the nearest address quite a lot of the problems that other chains haven't been able to address thanks david it was great to have some behind the scenes here at consensus and

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    to see what's really happening on the ground and now it is with great pleasure that i can announce our next panelist with the armored kingdom team we're super proud to be partnering with armored kingdom to help redefine the future of fandom and now without further ado i'll let you watch and enjoy the panel with mila sharad lindsey and lisa hi everyone welcome to the near town hall meeting

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    live during consensus we have some amazing amazing folks joining us to make a pretty impressive announcement during this town hall meeting you're going to be you're just going to be blown away so just wanted to introduce myself kathy hackl i am a metaverse thought leader i'm you know popularly known as the godmother of the metaverse and i am just thrilled to be here um because we have some

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    truly breaking news in the industry that is going to have you know i think ripple effects um and you guys are going to want to know everything about it so i want to kind of introduce the folks that are joining me a lot of them a lot all of them really need no introduction um but really excited to have him here for a very special reason so we are joined by mila kunis who you guys all probably know we're also joined by sharad devarajan um who

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    is an icon in the comic uh in the comic world uh he's the godfather of comics we just wanted to name him uh we also have lisa sterbakov and also lindsay mcinerney and they have all come together all these visionaries have come together to launch something today and i kind of wanted to maybe start off with mila you sharing with everyone here in the town hall exactly what you guys are launching today which is just fascinating

76. 36:05

    okay boy this i'll try to give you like the um the elevator version because the the short and long of it is i spent a lot of my youth playing video games and so um it was one of those where i felt like by playing it you know you're like the coach in the sidelines and you think you know better or you're like the viewer at home and you think you know better than the coach that's how i feel about certain gaming um

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    qualities that i think i possess and lisa and i um spend a lot of our 20s part of having kids playing a lot of board games and a lot of video games and a lot of card games and um we decided to venture into nfts a while ago and we did that and i'd like to say we did it successfully and i was like well i think i know what the next venture should be and i think that she was hoping i'd say

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    another nft and i was like no i want to take down the gaming community and so um which is like a small feat uh we ended up her uh hugh sterbakov created this multiverse game i should say it's called armored kingdom and um the idea behind it is i wanted to create my an ip a world that has a multi-use to it so the idea behind armor kingdom is it is based in story it's based in um characters and theme that is what lisa and i do naturally anyways with

79. 37:26

    production on the traditional side and so all of this started out with character development and we built out this world called armor kingdom and we wanted to put out comic books that went along with it because obviously everything needs an origin story and that's when we went after liquid comics and charade and we were like i know this is crazy just think about it for a second we want to build like a lord of the rings and he was like

80. 37:48

    yo okay and so we ventured into that that's going to be the first installment out of armor kingdom is like the origin story of all of our species and who they are where they come from what the inn is and the why we're going to be dropping those there's a gaming element to it that we're going to be dropping a couple months um from now that's going to be like a card game where uh you can do each other with cards there's going to be armors that we're going to be dropping there's toolboxes all it's going to be really

81. 38:14

    interactive really really fun then after that we're going to be dropping an animated series to kind of continue along the legacy and the story of that so that's what we're doing we're building out an entire amazing multiverse called armored kingdom i love it and this is the first time anyone has heard of it this is like we're sharing it here in this near calendar yeah amazing um so i mean all of you guys are master

82. 38:37

    storytellers in whatever in in your different industries right because you guys combine a lot of different things yes i'd love to hear i'd love to hear which you know from each one of you like sherrod when mila came to you with this idea when mila you know lisa and the team came to you with this idea what was like how did you how did you react what did you what did you think i mean because you probably had you know the wheels started turning i'm sure absolutely i mean first i think no one can ever say no to mueller

83. 39:02

    if they come to me with anything it's exciting and this was by far one of the most exciting things i've heard because it forced a lot of just ways we think about how do we create multi-platform stories for the world and you know i think a lot of people are creating stories very linearly like a tv or a film or a comic and then licensing to other partners but the goal and mission of this was how do we really think of all of these pieces from the ground up

84. 39:26

    how do we really immerse people into a world and you know i think as you know the godmother of the metaverse right like we know that the future of the metaverse is going to be some sort of unique storytelling combination where we take people into worlds and you know that's what totally was so amazing about what mila had shared with me from what you and lisa and all of them had been working on was they were thinking much more world first and the narrative

85. 39:50

    around that would enhance every part of the game play every part of people feeling more and more adversely so for my love of comics fantasy sci-fi genre you know and and really my love of bringing stories together from east and west and trying to combine how do we connect the world through different mythologies different stories this was an opportunity to create like a modern man you know do something i feel that you know my passion fantasy sci-fi

86. 40:15

    you're you know combining the two you know bringing together sort of game of thrones meets independence day and figuring out how to combine all of these elements is pretty awesome but you know from a comic book animation live action but more importantly from a story narrative and getting people to actually feel a level of ownership and commitment yeah i think the one thing i don't you find this to be true at least we did we had people contact us as a company after

87. 40:40

    video games came out and after card games came on board games and they would come to us and be like now create the movie or create the show and it would be really hard to do because you're trying to reverse engineer something that doesn't exist and so i think for us the most important thing was having the story having the folklore having the rules of the game make sense like everything is it makes sense and then building the tech part of it that's where we went and got lindsay and we went and hired the entire team to go and

88. 41:05

    do that was the secondary part for us was creating the the the coding aspect of it or the building the engineering aspect but the game the the foundation of the game is very true and very honest yeah and 100 agree i think the 90 of you know successful things that we're seeing are being licensed from one part to another they're being thought of you know in one silo first and i think that's where we can change the rules of how a new media franchise is how a new

89. 41:29

    story is built and really engages with fans at so many different dimensions and that's the whole right but obviously the goal of what we're trying to do is is to go into the unknown both in terms of process and in terms of execution right yeah and deliver something that is new and we'll have you know immensely different challenges than something that we've all faced in traditional producing or you know traditional kind of media projects yeah and i think when we talk about that

90. 41:54

    at least i mean you've been producing content forever you've been telling stories in many different ways um i'd love to hear about how you are working with lindsay lindsay's like the tech person here who's actually you know taking the idea and implementing it and making it real you know doing the hard tech part how are you guys working together to enable uh armored kingdom i mean because you guys must be you know it has to be it's almost like lindsay was the missing

91. 42:18

    piece and then now you guys have all the pieces to be able to kind of pull this off so yeah i think that's that's absolutely correct and i think the the wonderful thing about lindsay is like meal and i and sherrod we have we have ideas like and and when we talk about the way this game is being developed it's actually being developed and and innovated from story ideas that we have and so we have all these crazy ideas and it's like well what if we could do this

92. 42:40

    and as gamers we've always had that that like what if sort of idea and that sort of moment and so we can go to lindsay and go what if and then put something out in the world that's insane and she's like okay actually i think we can do that nobody's done it before so we'll need to like figure some stuff out here but i think we can actually make that happen and so she's basically taking our crazy ideas

93. 43:05

    which by the way this what if game is the game that you play when you're creating stories all the time that's what we do what if this what is that and so we get to do this now and then put that into product and put that into game which is a whole new exciting way for me to be able to create that i'm that's so exciting and lindsay's been he's made us even push even further and then she's executing on our crazy ideas it's been amazing you've become a tech wizard i love it

94. 43:30

    lindsay you're making it we're making the impossible happen um that's the sense i have so when we talk a little bit about armor kingdom i mean everyone's probably like wow this is really interesting let's talk a little bit more about about what you know what do you want people to get out of this how do you want people to experience it um and then yeah we are going to talk and by the way this is the near town hall so we are going to be talking about near um but i do want to kind of dive a little bit deeper into

95. 43:55

    how you want people to feel when they go into armored kingdom uh and experience it i think that it does play into near because i think the reason we chose near and decided to all work together is because it's very accessible and the one thing that we really wanted our game to be is to be accessible we didn't want it to be we would we didn't want to alienate the normies and we didn't want it to feel like it's just an elitist game only for people that understand web 3 or only people understand crypto or

96. 44:20

    only people lives and nfts like i think that that's a dated concept we did really genuinely and do wholeheartedly believe that this is a game that a 20 year old kid can play and a 35 year old stay-at-home mom can play just as well and that's the thing that i think nier has is the ui is incredibly easy it's easy to build off everything about it it's just really accessible and that was the most important thing to us is to make it not feel overwhelming and not

97. 44:43

    make it feel so foreign and i think when we dove into web 3 initially by the way this game lives a little web 3 a little web 2 it's a little bit of everything which is maybe what's going to make it so different and super unique and near was on board with us doing these absurd ideas but the the thing that we didn't want to do was have people be like oh no i'm very much against crypto i'm not playing this game we're like that's okay you don't need to be into crypto to play this game or people would be like i'm very much

98. 45:07

    against web 3 we'd be like that's cool too you can still play this game like every which way to us this was the most important part was to make it fun accessible and easy yeah anyone want to add anything else lisa well i mean i love the idea of like how do you want to feel playing this game i mean i want people to feel immersed i want people to feel um like like they're part of the story like

99. 45:30

    when they see a piece of armor that comes up that they've actually read about in one of the comics i want them to be like whoa wait that's there i haven't seen that before we want that sort of excitement and why i think building the game out on story first allows that to happen is you're able to place the easter eggs pretty early in into the comics and then we really want to be able i mean the one of the wonderful things about being on the blockchain is we can

100. 45:54

     very easily like hold information give people people let people dig into fun parts of of what the armors can do what they um what the other what other players are doing all of that sort of fun inter interaction and engagement we want them to be able to be part of that 100 i mean in anything as big as what we're trying to do here in terms of a world creation it really is about being able to identify with

101. 46:18

     those characters like to go deeper into and each of the you know different warring factions that exist within armored kingdom have their own you know just kind of philosophies understanding why they're there what they do and different people will gravitate to different types of those characters so the goal is to put that baby all in conflict but you know just like human nature and i think the world there are different ideas that fuel myself and and

102. 46:42

     how we can express that through this great story i think it was uh you know attributed to maya angelou but people will forget what you hear but they'll never forget what they feel and i i think our goal in this is really to create a game where people walk into an experience they feel they can live these characters and they can become a part of this world for yours which is where i think that the love of all of us share for sci-fi comes into play i think sci-fi is allegory and

103. 47:07

     that's what makes sci-fi brilliant and great and relatable and i think that so much of what this game is is allegory um not to get super heady but that it is all built on on real life issues situations thoughts everything um that's like on the the ground foundation on the surface of it it's really fun and really great but it is at the end of the day sci-fi so it does come with a lot of allegory

104. 47:31

     awesome and lindsay i mean let's talk a little bit about the game mechanics and like you guys are designing you're creating a story you're designing a game as well right there's a lot of things that go into game game mechanics and how do you make it work what are your your thoughts around that so far yeah like my thoughts are that i'm pretty glad that i'm working with the world's nerdiest gamers um you know me mila mila and lisa wasting their use is

105. 47:55

     coming in very handy uh now nowadays i'll tell you um so sorry i'm gay uh you know and they seem to have quite a few friends that they're able to you know drag out of uh certain places to come and give us some thoughts and feedback but you know i think i'm just having fun imagining people being able to collect uh collect and own things um right so like as a collector a collector of everything myself it's um you know really unimaginable that that people have not been able to truly

106. 48:26

     actually own assets and and have that excitement merge with a world where you know people are used to ownership but not in the way that it will translate in this you know with this new new medium so i'm really excited for for people to be able to enjoy game play in in a way that you know i see lisa and mila just getting fired up uh you know about but then but then also recognize at the end of it that um you know that stuff's really in

107. 48:50

     their bag which i think is very exciting i mean if the apple doesn't fall far from the tree my five-year-old's obsessed with collecting pokemon cards as lisa recently i mean like obsessed okay like this has nothing to do with me i was never a pokemon but the idea of collecting clearly is something that like just resonates in so many like little kids and adults and i think that this game and that's why i think the blockchain comes into

108. 49:13

     incredible use of is you can't fake a collectible in a blockchain you don't have to put a flashlight through that card to see if it's real or fake you don't need to take a microscope to see like what was when was it created does it have a star does it have a circle does it have a heart like it's all spelled out you can't cheat the system it's it is it's awesome and like even the idea of like collectibles having a scratch and they're worth a little bit less or they're pristine they're worth a

109. 49:37

     little bit more all of that is an armor kingdom we have all of that in it like if your character's got a little scratch spoiler alert maybe less worth less a little bit later you know what i mean like how much you play your cards is going to be dependent on the value of your card the entire like ethos of collecting we are putting on the blockchain i love that um maybe maybe we can chat a little bit more about nir as well uh we already talked mila you mentioned why

110. 50:02

     you chose near but uh near is great guys we love near it is the near town hall um but maybe you know let's talk a little bit about the environmental aspect right as well i think uh there is a reason you chose near as well and i'm sure it has to also be aligned with you know some sustainable sustainability positions there so yeah yeah like we we did a big uh a big hunt for a blockchain that we we felt

111. 50:29

     would be one that we could be in a partnership with for a really long time and lake mila said one that was incredibly simple um simple to use we we wanted and near stood out like you know incredibly um both from being a blockchain that that crypto folks really really like um and has a lot of really interesting technical you know technical components right underneath it that we're big fans

112. 50:52

     of but then also being lightweight enough um and yes you know environmentally friendly enough that we felt really strongly we could we could partner and enjoy and feel really good about that partnership and bring people to this world and universe that we really want to um i think that that's one of the things that's really exciting about the entertainment space in general is is is thinking about how many how many people that are going to be able to use a technology that is complicated like a

113. 51:18

     blockchain in a really easy way well they don't really know that it's there they're just enjoying a universe they're enjoying a world they're enjoying reading a comic um and so that was um that was you know key part of the decision making process and one that um the one that was was dead simple when we looked at near i also think early into one of our meetings with near they talked about like their mission statement as a whole as to where they see web3 going and i think that that very much aligned with where we see it

114. 51:43

     going and so often we met with other blockchains that didn't necessarily align with our long-term plan a lot of them had like a really short-term like you know guns-a-blazing bull in the china shop concept which i was like that's cool for like two months but what about like a year from now and near was one of the only companies that we met with that really did have a a a mission statement that aligned with where we think who knows but what we feel the web 3's going into

115. 52:13

     they really championed i think the kind of creativity we were bringing to something like this to think about a box to really push something like that so i feel especially as we look at sort of the phases of where web3 is going we're so early and you know obviously large of that is is driven domestically here in the states but you know international's a huge part of this go forward for me in particular a lot of my character work and work has been in the overseas

116. 52:36

     markets and there's such an alignment how i think you're seeing that expansion over the next phases of its journey which align without you know this property but you know our own personal backgrounds yeah yeah and i think our plan was we're going to be around for a very long time this is a we're building out a massive multiverse and so i don't think that we needed or wanted to be somewhere where it was about like a get-rich-quick scheme we wanted some

117. 53:00

     place that was going to be around for a while yeah yeah and i love i love what you guys were mentioning about accessibility about you know this is this is a game that can grow with the generation it can be eventually you know accessible in emerging markets it's going to be it has a lot of opportunities there for you know everyone from grandkids to grannies to be able to be part of the of the skin the grannies can play a car trading game

118. 53:23

     of course they can granny love that of course why not right um so let's talk a little bit about you know you we talked a little bit about how you guys are seeing this in the long term right and there is an element eventually of you know potentially doing movies and creating content like that what are your thoughts around that because i feel like you know a lot um a lot of people in the entertainment industry are trying to crack that code yeah you guys have

119. 53:48

     something very solid because you're starting with story you're starting with game not thinking about you know the next blockbuster or something you guys are starting with the true beginning of what makes a good story in a good game yeah i don't have an answer for it other than this is just a version of how to do it and i think that what where we are in the world of web threes this allows us to do it so it's just being in the right

120. 54:12

     place at the right time and it's not to say that other people won't be doing it or wouldn't have done it it's just that i think that the time just is now i mean honestly like i don't think a year ago we would be able to do it that's the truth and i think that you know when we decided to go about this maybe whenever we started this conversation six months ago i think that less lisa or i mean it was like it's been like nine months nine months ago

121. 54:36

     i think it was still we're still all really early in web 3. like sometimes i forget that web 3 is still end of one like there's not very many of us in it and already you're like what's the next thing that we can do and so uh i think that we were just at the right place at the right time with like where tech was what we were able to do how quickly we were able to do it i think that all of that has to align for this to happen so i just think this is

122. 55:00

     another way of creating a marvel you know what i mean like i'm sure that if if they could have they would have but they did it 50 60 70 80 years ago and and do we want to make a big massive live-action movie of this yes no question like i mean the my world of what i want to do with this is so much bigger than i can even describe there's no because because everything allows it to happen like i wouldn't have thought that i ever would be given not that i couldn't create a

123. 55:28

     a card game video game or any of that but i didn't think that it would be as accessible to me as it is today and i think that web3 call it near the blockchain all of that just gives you access to everything well i think i you know just echo all of that because there are many different paths people can take but what's true is a rising tide lifts all bones right and we're in an ecosystem right now where we are seeing such amazing creativity coming into web3 and our you know our hope is that this

124. 55:53

     will be something that really is trying to think about the process the creativity and the product in a way that's unique and different and and offers all of that best coming there but at the end is enduring and you know it is a character entertainment franchise that people are connected to for decades right that's really what we want to build here and yeah i think all the technology lines up forever

125. 56:17

     that's awesome lindsay anything else you want to add i think just that you know what makes this team really interesting of course is is the strong entertainment background but um but also sort of the the swings that that they've already taken and knocking down in the in the web 3 space to like stoner cats being launched in you know last year right in august you know august last year was was

126. 56:40

     there's a lot of learnings there a lot of amazing firsts uh which was really exciting like so many cool things that that the team did around re-engineering contracts in the uh in the entertainment industry to to fit this space and then you know the the next project that they've done with uh with the gimmicks sherrod has launched an nft project in in india that was entertainment related so you know this is a team that has some pretty interesting hands-on experience both

127. 57:05

     across entertainment and web three and um you know i think it's it's a perfect squad here to get this uh to get this done and launch a really exciting story for everyone i love it that's great um and i think you know as we kind of get towards the end of of this town hall interview um any advice for you know folks that are developers that are using near uh and they hear what you guys are building they get excited any advice for

128. 57:30

     for the people that are up and coming that might have an idea and haven't started developing it or you know what can they walk away with look at i would say the the near development ecosystem has been really interesting in that it is it is there's a a lot of really sophisticated resourcing that they've put into making sure that they're accessible and that there's um you know that there's there's opportunity to connect directly with the

129. 57:52

     people who have built built the chain ecosystem um and there's also been some phenomenal introductions everybody's really well connected um to one another and all very invested in making sure that the new ecosystem is awesome so everything from introductions to marketplaces within the ecosystem and other folks who are building games have been phenomenal um to every twice a day there's a development call that i can get on with near developers or if i'm

130. 58:17

     stuck on something we can ask we can figure out right away so by the time you know lisa and mila and schrod wake up i have an answer and you know as we're going to bed again i can get my follow-up answer and it's you know it's really professional and really well done and a really really simple ecosystem to build um to build inside of so um i think my my two sounds would be try opening in your wallet um the experience is really

131. 58:41

     really interesting and so so easy and that was sort of like this magic moment for me when i when i first opened the new wall i went oh my god this is this is dead simple this doesn't feel like a blockchain in a lot of ways um so it was a really really magic experience yeah let me just jump in and say oh yeah lisa let me come in and say real quick we don't sleep in she's just eight hours ahead of us it's not like two weeks yeah yeah that that's true i'm in london they're they're eight hours

132. 59:07

     behind me so when i say that they wake up they're not getting up at noon what if united they get to wake up at like 9 30 p.m well wouldn't that be nice how about 8 p.m i also think for everyone coming in like to web 3 right now the hardest thing is just feeling like there's so much out there that i don't understand and i i think that for a lot of you know entrepreneurs or creators or developers

133. 59:29

     that want to just jump in and i think it's all about this ecosystem as lindsay's saying the ecosystem is incredibly friendly and supportive and and what i find is i have to say mila and lisa really took me down the rabbit hole right like when they brought me into this project i had no idea just how much learning there was but how much fun it is so they they've brought me into a world that you know i had not known as much of before so i would i would strongly encourage

134. 59:54

     the first steps the hardest step in this right trying to get in trying to understand but certainly doing your learnings trying to get into the communities because these communities are very open accessible and you know wanting to build it much bigger than what it is right now so i love it it's so fundamentally different than traditional hollywood ecosystems in some way that that i find it very refreshing and just incredibly fun

135. 1:00:16

     yeah there just definitely seems to be a lot of collaboration and openness right now and i mean that's kind of where we're towards what we're all building right um i have two more questions left for the panel um uh the next one is if we were having this town hall in five years what do you think a hard working house looked like then what are we doing on my friends wait say this kathy what do we think in five years what's gonna what five years in five years we're like

136. 1:00:43

     we're doing a check-in yeah an armored kingdom what what is happening at that point with armored kingdoms so oh boy who are you now me who gets anyone anyone that wants to put their futurist hat on we have lisa well how much can i say well what i know but i mean that's where i'm like i don't know i can tell you but i also don't know how much i can say i think the idea is and i'll just say it i played a lot of video games

137. 1:01:14

     that were like maybe like world of warcraft type of games right and so and i also consume lots of comics and i love sci-fi so if you can just take the best of those that's what i want this to be in five years like that would be my my dream is to create worlds where this where armor kingdom has um an outlet such as that where you can go and play in a big video game okay where like there's mo

138. 1:01:45

     like everything and everything essentially we're building out a massive ip and so it's all about creating the world that's rich that you can mine from that you can build off of and then the ultimate plan would be hopefully that people in web 3 would join this community and they themselves can do things with it and that's the beautiful thing about web3 is the fact that this can launch itself into other aspects that people can build um on top of

139. 1:02:11

     it so not speaking specific for armored kingdom but almost anyone starting anything now and jumping in has to be thinking a lot of the points that mueller just raised but certainly what's the creator economy component of this how are creators you know really adding to building creating being a part of where this shapes and goes forward but metaverse is going to be a big part of this as well i think the the picks and

140. 1:02:34

     shovels of that ecosystem are just getting started so we almost don't know what will be unlocked you know five years from now but in an idealized world you're gonna have incredible tools that we can't even begin to imagine today but what will drive those tools will be great stories characters connection community and if we have all of that coming together i think then you want to for us at least we want to be at the

141. 1:02:56

     forefront of all of those innovations i think that's where you know it's just been an amazing group of people that want to take risks and want to say let's go for it and push it so as soon as those picks and shovels come i have no doubt we'll be the ones trying to say what can we do to enhance the armored kingdom at that point and push it but i think metaverse will be a big i mean it's this metaverse is such an easy answer right like that's my answer for everything i feel like where do you see anything going i'm like the

142. 1:03:20

     metaverse but like it because it's just it makes so much more it makes sense like right right you know it just makes sense right now and it will happen there's no question about it no matter how much people want to say like it's not there yet no but it will be um the bigger question is are we going to be living in a metaverse or are going to be wearing the metaverse and i think

143. 1:03:37

     that that's the more interesting debate of in five years are you going to be wearing a t-shirt that someone can scan and all of a sudden it'll pop up as like for us call it like an armor right or whatever it'll be will we be immersed in goggles in a metaverse possibly but we could also be wearing a metaverse so there's so many different ways that you can interpret what the metaverse is that i also don't want people to get landlocked in the idea of wearing goggles and that we're all going to be

144. 1:04:00

     living in wall-e yeah no i i actually think some of the even the basic ways games have evolved that people feel more functionally building their community watching concerts in experiencing so much of their life in now if you think of that as the new operating system i think we'll see a lot of metaverse combining those tactics as we operate systems as we go forward forgetting about arvr and what may be mr and brain machine implants right like that may happen you

145. 1:04:25

     know but we're a little bit away from that but i but i definitely doubt we will be on a similar interaction like this yeah i think those cats all went tech kathy so i'm going to tell you and look i want the nft community and the crypto community to calm down already because i'm not saying this is going to happen but i'd like to uh i would like to to to actually because i've come from the tech world um experience what it's

146. 1:04:48

     like to create a piece of film with these guys so um that's maybe really analog but i would love to uh to see armor kingdom be a feature film in the next five years you think about the ideas of just where film can go in web3 and what could happen i mean the opportunity for people to own pieces of the film and connect them together to create scenes or you know kind of just different ways a community can help in the creation of ip and films

147. 1:05:14

     i think across the board on media you're going to see a lot of very innovative things i love that everyone's talking about the future but it's about the human experiences of today and in the future right it's about those shared human experiences wherever whichever reality we're in um whichever world we're in but um you know i use a phrase i would say in the metaverse where we're all world builders and now is our time to build uh

148. 1:05:38

     and i absolutely love what you guys are building the world you're building and also the inspiration you're giving everyone um as you guys build and and really create the future so thank you thanks for joining us today so thanks for having us thank you so much for joining this was actually awesome it was we told you our biggest tunnel ever we're so super proud to have had the amazing actually a special panel of the months that you

149. 1:06:02

     heard to have been able to share with you the news of what we've been actually sharing here at consensus but also the roadmap and what's coming up so yeah thank you for tuning in and we look forward to actually seeing you very soon