Block Zero Stage | Proof of Vibes: Scaling the Blockchain With In-Person Events

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1. 0:00

   so um I'm really happy to be welcoming proof of Vibes ant Marshall and Russ Ballard to talk about how in real life events can really help scale the ecosystem let's go they got chairs I was really planning to do get on my Steve balber real quick just walk around here get sweaty but this is amazing good morning good afternoon good evening is it good evening I don't know it's good evening somebody somewhere somewhere so

2. 0:34

   yeah let's jump into it I'm Russ uh co-founder and chief Vibe officer over at proof of Vibes super excited just to be talking with you guys here today and walking through the Vibes and what that actually means on chain what does it mean feel like I need to interview you the way we're sitting so Russ ballad what does what does it mean um what do Vibes mean on Chain man I I I really think we just take a step back backwards and figure out how we came to this point right what happened how did we get to even bringing Vibes on

3. 1:06

   chain and the importance and what that looks like like ultimately starting off I grew up in Philadelphia ended up moving to Austin Texas which created this Paradigm for me and just shifted the way I think and so South by Southwest 2021 me and Aunt are going out out and about moving and grooving and ultimately realize like all right there's so many different events there's so much going on how do we know what's

4. 1:31

   going on before we get there right like what does that actually look like and how pivotal because I'm a person who goes to a lot of different conferences always doing the little circuit and like there's so many different side events how do I know which one I should go to before I get there right so the idea proof of vibe spawned being able to understand and have quality verification about an event before you

5. 1:55

   get there let alone understanding The Vibes aspect of it and how it trans translate to iners events in regards to your identity that part and I mean just to add on there you know a lot of us we talk about Vibes you know when you go to an event um you know a friend of yours may say well what's the vibe there right you'll get that text because a lot of us are dealing with fomo right you're sitting in bed I literally was doing

6. 2:19

   this was like opening night party I'm in bed I'm like I should go send me a photo send me a video and so it was literally that simple um but the truth is in web 3 like there's so many rabbit holes that you have to go down to really understand this thing some of you that are developers and coders this is like secondhand information for you but as we talk about really scaling what this is

7. 2:41

   to the rest of the world we really need like simple simple onboarding approaches and that's really where this came in it was like you know we were honored by what poap did in the in the early days which was really simple the QR code yourself into into web 3 but then it really kind of just dropped you off right you got this nft in your wallet didn't know what it did and we were like well what if we took that to the next level you know

8. 3:06

   what if when you get to that event and you QR code in to this world you're able to rate the vibe you know how do we quantify what a vibration is uh so we could get into a little of that so you asked yourself what is proof of Vibes proof of Vibes is a vibe to earn protocol incentivizing taste makers to get paid for curating Good Vibes and we get hit the next slide do we have a little clicker or clicker ah and I feel like I need to stand up Sensational let's get it all right so a couple of things we want to talk through today

9. 3:39

   identity through IRL events what is a did VC's verifiable credential strategic Partnerships quality verification and Med and revenue models what do all that mean so part of the problem we're looking at right again we're talking about scale uh for me uh little a little bit about my background uh started a company in 1991 almost 33 years ago called Lyricist Lounge we were an open mic a showcase venue turn tour turn

10. 4:11

    albums with rockus records turn MTV show it was all about bringing the underground of hip-hop you know the underground hip-hop culture to the mainstream from there I kind of moved on to doing other things launched a company with Alora called current TV this is back in 2005 where user generated content was a new thing now we call it social media but having gone through that whole journey where we are now is social media has really taken hold of all the creatives right they've gamified

11. 4:44

    it in a way where every day you feel like you have to upload to keep up to get followers we all know the deal but now the artists have caught up to that like I'm not doing that shit anymore right and they've heard about web 3 they want to come into it but they need to ass simple approach to doing that so we've identified that a lot of them are not making money now and so how do we create a way for them to make money

12. 5:07

    through this process exactly and then how do we plan to solve this SSID that is such a complex and overwhelming comp it's overly convoluted scaring the W it's scaring the woes you know so at the end of the day we have to break it down in an easily digestible way right and then through iro activations not to mention quality verification Vibe checks this is so essential to the ecosystem we're not doing enough Vibe checks Community consensus this is the ultimate mechanism that we need to be using to be able to

13. 5:39

    qualify what is and what is not viby and so ultimately that's our Playbook Community can censored in through taste makers and this is vital understand you ask yourself okay what's a taste maker a taste maker is a person who decides what's going to be cool before it's cool right and this is very subjective what is cool but ultimately when we talk about what is we're trying to do in the near ecosystem and reach a billion users

14. 6:03

    we need those who are going to help on board the masses and have influence over the masses and these are taste makers a very underrated and I think underrepresented uh Collective and Niche Y and just to give out some examples of what that would look like right because we could talk words all day it's a simple a simple app you QR code once you get to the event you're able to take a

15. 6:26

    photo with your friend and then rate the vibe Vibes of people places and things so the place if it's an event density how how how many people were there I was it's okay even this place right here why don't we do one too even this place right here right how friendly was the vibe right this young woman is smiling I'm Feeling Good Vibrations from him this guy looks a little mean like he wants to beat me up I'm only kidding now

16. 6:51

    I got him to smile so the vibe is back up but these are things that I could rate right when I meant this photo it then is a transaction and shows up on boss right so we're creating realtime ways to show transactions very quickly I don't care what idea you're talking about if that shit is not translating into transactions what the fuck are you talking about so we're literally let me retake this real quick we're going to put Vibes on chain IRL in person get in

17. 7:17

    here a and this is how we quantify Vibes so you're at the spot like a was saying you rate this event and you guys probably can't see it on my phone but nonetheless we rate events on four things energy density friendliness and diversity and this is a scale one to 10 and this is what quantifies A vibe in our eyes again energy density friendliness and diversity and we can go to the next slide so you get rate that

18. 7:40

    on scale one to 10 all and I think it's pretty friendly in here energy is a little low I think we're getting to the end of the conference so it's pretty chill we're all ready to go home and close out density not that packed nonetheless I think it's pretty divers here's a wide range of people and so again Vibe check and you can mint that on chain and now it show up on boss in the feed exactly so first first collector to put Vibes on chain you now

19. 8:04

    now the as simple as that is right ultimately that's his opinion of what the vibe is what happens when we all do it right that's where we get quality verification of this event or quality verification of an nft so people are not getting rugged or quality verification of a person right cuz a lot of us when we meet someone they give us the representative like oh yeah hey if you got money they're like oh yes everything's right but I don't really know you so what if I had a consensus of who you are right that would help and it

20. 8:35

    may keep you a little more on point as a person right as we create a community consensus of who we are and what we're doing precisely and then the self- Sovereign identity aspect deep in the rabbit hole deep in the rabbit hole it's a lot to digest I think it's three major ideas you got self-serving identity you having ownership over identity this is such a foreign concept to us when we use Facebook X I was about to say Twitter

21. 9:01

    but it's X now Instagram we don't actually believe it or not we don't actually own those photos that we put out right so this is a very interesting use case for blockchain to be able to have full ownership over whatever content you put out then we have decentralized identity this is an open standard based identity framework from digital identifiers and verif verifiable credentials which then leads me into

22. 9:23

    okay what are verif credentials these are basically it represents physical cred such as passports or licenses so this is all digital and I think that these are like the three pillars of what self- Sovereign identity is and just decentralized identity on chain as a whole so and this is like the the nerdy explanation right in in general what we're doing is building a brand right we're figuring out the business model

23. 9:48

    the general business model is Loyalty Rewards for events period right you want the elevator pitch Loyalty Rewards for events but as you go down the rabbit hole where solving for a lot more and now we're thinking about real world assets Etc what if we had localized venues around the world and could fractionalize ownership for the ownership of that right and so there's a lot of things there that we're also

24. 10:12

    looking at but on a high level we just want to do cool events we just want to onboard people in a simple way not over nerdify what the thing is right and then slowly start to bring them into the fold and scale this thing out exactly how do we do it so taste maker down approach and these taste makers are so vital to the ecosystem I hate to say it and break the bad news to you but it's a bunch of nerds in this ecosystem right now and

25. 10:38

    I'm a nerd as well and so I say that very in a in a very positive way but I think at the end of the day when we are just ones in zeros we lose the human approach and it doesn't really feel welcoming when I first joined blockchain it wasn't the most welcoming space it wasn't the most inviting it little overwhelming if I wasn't the person I am and able to make friends and communicate and do what I do then I probably would have left a long time ago

26. 11:04

    and I say that to say there are taste makers out there who have a large influence over crowds that you might not never know and so being able to have a system or basically being able to digest this information to them in a easy conceptualized way so that they can share it to their audiences is vital and this is what we want to focus on and I think a perfect example of how tastemaker approaches are actually trans

27. 11:29

    transferable in real world examples real world examples are Spotify playlists as you can see rap cavar has over 14 million followers and 7even billion streams people curate these playlists put this music together and some of these songs you might not never heard before and they end up blowing up and popping right these are taste makers taste makers are ones who curate these experiences who curate Vibes who curate

28. 11:53

    different things for people absolutely so this was early on in and some of what we were thinking about you know uh the app works in a very simple ways we've all heard of web one two and three we've created kind of these uh buckets in a sense you join the app anyone can get in anyone can see what's going on uh you can create your own profile uh for you to go a little deeper and kind of get web 2 access and connect with your favorite taste makers and get a little deeper down there's a level there and then there's an additional

29. 12:24

    level where you're actually one of the taste makers who is a part of our Dow able to have our token and then able to you know work with your localized Community to push that out exactly earn vibe from reviewing Vents and become a Vibe validator let's talk about that redeem section too Vibe points and redeeming it's essential I think that ultimately rewarding people for going out makes a lot of sense people are already going to events you know in a lot of the early days we want it to be a web three Yelp of sorts so you're able

30. 12:56

    to go to an event leave a review and then be rewarded for that which then creates this circular economy of okay imagine a world in which I went to this event but now because I'm part of this network part because of this community now I can go to this shop or go to this popup and redeem these for cool merch cool experiences Loyalty Rewards and web 3 is nothing new I think it's the ultimate value exchange and the chain

31. 13:20

    right this is our take on how to do that and a more cultural curated experience in a way you exactly and our own little bit of flavor yep because at at the end of the day I think we're we're trying to force people to use web 3 like there aren't there are a lot of like highb brain reasons why we should use web 3 because we need to blah blah blah and take over the system but in the in the

32. 13:43

    larger capacity they're like okay show me how I can use it today right and as soon as you pull your shit out most of our things most of our toys don't work right you're like yeah all you got to do is put and they're like uh-huh uhhuh uh-huh so now you've lost them right you've lost them and so in order for us to really scale this thing we got to create things that work they need to be

33. 14:06

    simple and then we need to give them space to kind of go deeper down the rabbit hole and so the redeem section has been that for us we want to create incredible clothing capsules with Incredible designers we want to show it and promote it as much as possible and when the world is ready to get it they can't pay for it exactly right so they're texting that taste maker or whoever that influencer hey how do I get that proof of Vibes Nike uh capsule you

34. 14:32

    guys dropped oh you got to join the community right that's where the engagement happens so if they can't buy it they have to use the thing now we have transactions now we have some things going on and that's part of our our Circle precisely and again the experiences this is so vital I seen a tweet not too long ago it's at web3 currently in this market is an events company and I couldn't agree more right

35. 14:57

    in this bare Market as we're all down bad I think events are what keep us together there's a circuit and it's a beautiful thing being able to meet someone at ECC and then see them at Dev connect or meet someone at nearon this year or last year and now a year later and you reconnect with them and it's all good it's allh I me R that's how we met that's how we met two years ago at a nft

36. 15:20

    NC and was able to come together and now we've built a company and throwing events all over the world and had amazing experiences and I think these are what really translate and ultimately as we're in this build season we must continue to uphold and maintain so experiences are how we plan to create revenue and create a sustainable and continuous in community right AB private mixers Retreats game nights boat parties cookouts these are things we've already done thus far which have Pro proven successful and things that we want to

37. 15:52

    scale up locally right we'd also be wrong not to highlight that there are black and brown people on screen believe it right we need diversity and it's not just oh we need more black people in here we need diverse thinkers it's not all about the zeros and ones I'm a big culture person and I've said this on repeat culture is code I don't know how to code but I definitely know how to curate this room and everyone that would be in this room from all the people I've ever met like the coding that's going to come from

38. 16:25

    that the information that comes from that so we can create all the zeros and ones we want but if we don't connect with culture we don't connect with the people and if we don't connect with the people then we won't scale then we won't be here next year right these rooms are getting smaller so we're trying to keep this thing going and make sure that it can grow but we've also recognized that what started as for us about the

39. 16:51

    creatives we realize that we didn't want to alienate anybody because we're we're talking to folks who are all zeros and ones so we we went back to the lab and we're like the truth is it's really a toggle right you want to know where the Vibes are for the creatives toggle down to the creatives but you want to know where the Vibes are with the coders and the developers then toggle down to that because that may be a smaller Vibe uh a space that doesn't have a lot of loud

40. 17:16

    music it may be more of a hacker house and the way you see that is on our app through the map yeah right so you toggle down to the to the developers and then you see all of the little blips that are coming up on our map you say oh something's happening around here and maybe the spot that you were going to go there's like three people there so you're like definitely not going to that not a VI VIP situation yeah right where

41. 17:41

    the people are just like aunt said Vibes are very subjective and understand that toggle and there's developers there's you know artists fashionistas fashionisha spiritual people regions regions whatever the case might be so ultimately how do we curate experiences for for them and how do we still creating an inviting space for them because this is what we need in web 3 it just can't be purely developers right that doesn't really work too well we

42. 18:08

    need people from all different diverse backgrounds build this thing all over and so if we really want to continuously grow continuously move forward this is our goal and this is what our mission is to be able to create inviting spaces for all to enjoy and then be able how that translate on chain and build it with you right so any of you that are working on companies if you have ideas that you want to help you need help scaling this

43. 18:33

    thing you know getting in touch with the right folks who can help your specific idea get to a specific group let us know exactly we got about one minute and change if there are any questions we can totally talk a little more my front and the back yes oh yeah absolutely so shout out to the sponsors to the spons well they to get the event going for sure right and it's a great question um I think in the

44. 19:02

    redeem section right as we partner with Brands let's say they have a new product that they want to put out and there's a marketing budget they have for that they could allocate that to us we could create the experience that people can redeem in the redeem section so now you're getting a hyper Focus community that is engaged in web 3 so you know what kind of type of thinkers they are um and now they are using their Vibe checkpoints to redeem it for that

45. 19:32

    product or experience or Etc so that's one way but then the obvious Web Two web none ways of them putting up banners and etc etc and being seen as supporting something real yeah sponsors are definitely the ones that help us curate experiences and that foundational layer to make it happen because a lot of time these events can cost a lot of money and you know if you don't got a rich Uncle

46. 19:55

    come from a rich family then funding it yourself is a little hard so these Founders help us launch these events and then in exchange for that we offer like different assets like banners and different placement and it helps build their brand as well so I think that uh it it leads to a good point too how can we become sustainable outside of sponsorships for events this is a very vital and very important you know

47. 20:18

    question to ask so but yeah that's our time appreciate y'all also want to give a big shout out to NDC if you don't know about the near digital Collective my guy was the community engagement SL events Dow everything I was marketing lead for some time uh definitely joined the community if you can and creative Dow and all those who are viby in the ecosystem all the viby individuals shouts to you peace

48. 20:52

    peace