NEARCON 2023 | Block Zero Stage - Day 3

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

1. 0:04

   please welcome our MC to the stage near foundations bianka Mand good morning day three can't believe we made it um actually it's been an amazing two days of content but I'm super excited to be able to M see for the next two hours because it's all about engagement education uh and onboarding things that we actually really need to talk about near so I'm Bianca from near horizon horizon is a platform within near Foundation that supports early stage startups and I'm

2. 0:37

   excited to announce Boris pania who will be talking about partnering with universities and how Deb Hub is taking a look at that so please welcome Boris to the stage thank you Rea for the introduction so we definitely are we are about to start okay so we uh I'm going to talk a little how Dev hop is going to influence the near ecosystem through education right oh let me forg I forgot the thing so yeah so well uh again thanks I'm

3. 1:14

   Boris Bania I'm a def ra here in Def cop and I will talk a lot a little about how we what are we were doing in terms of education and developer engagement through education so first I will start talking about near campus uh right now near campus has three three areas we have the the blockchain clubs uh the blockchain clubs is basically we are engaging existing blockchain clubs in

4. 1:38

   different universities so we can add them engage developers at earlier stage of their career so that's the main focus of of the blockchain clubs we're also going H H doing some research that is the research part we are engaging PhD post doogs and professors H so they can add or use near as a part of their research pipelines either using near as a as a framework of the general research

5. 2:09

   or probably Focus the research in near a specific H subjects but also something called is very recently new called NBS the near blockchain H near near business school is the near business school is our approach to business to a university clubs that at not developer Focus I will talk about because it's really new uh I will talk aot so the the blockchain clubs this is what we're doing so we have engaged

6. 2:41

   around 50 University clubs 10 more coming about by the end of the year we right now we have big names like Caltech like University of California Santa Barbara University of California San Diego we have University of lenoi Arizona State and we also have like a little less known names we have universities in Africa Afric we have universities in Brazil and smaller universities in United States and Canada

7. 3:05

   um we are a focus you know more globally and the university that comes by the end of the year will be more universities for Latin America um right now what what is it what is this all about so the the clubs are requesting for funding for expertise for Technical Resources from us ER the first cohort already start to receive Fund in November a few there is one that gets some funding to come here and participate in the hackaton H they are

8. 3:35

   doing this is a we we have some base but H but it's very flexible what they can get the funds for right they are using hackaton in real life online workshops and even some of them are requesting funded to run their own validators notes so they that's ideas they coming from them and you know we're flexible we are we're open every region have different needs every college has different needs so we are open to fund them or support them if we can right and every single

9. 4:07

   proposal is being Post in Social in in Social DB you can go to devop social DB and read the proposal do the attestation read what they're doing so it's completely public they're all the members everything is there so just just if you need more information a specific Club you can find it there so we're also doing some par to spend this for example some colleges are asking for they run their own notes H def cannot provide the liquidity so we are just partnered with metap pool like we they kind of

10. 4:39

    committing like around half a million dollars initially to fund this validators not so they want to the put uh some delegation on the notes that are studi by universities that the main plan but also you know keep always talking Horizon so how the next steps how we can bring this uh developers and make it funders so that's that's the kind of a partnership we're doing with trying

11. 5:04

    to working with horiz Horizon H now research research is the the the the PHD the the post dos right so we are now working with three teams they are about to post their proposals H is um University of California Santa Barbara Stanford and a University of Calgary what is this they are requesting for funding for their for their own research ER I think the first cohort will come in January 2024 they are

12. 5:36

    working in research Mar Contra security cryptography protocol Etc the reason we're doing this are multiple but one ER and this is something we have discussed with other parts of n foundation not only deop is we want to the community to see we have the numbers like 96 or 96% of the research on blockchain is done either in Bitcoin or in ethereum so we want the the the near to become a household name when the time comes for doing research

13. 6:07

    if I'm doing my I'm a professor I'm a postdoc and about to do research I know smart contracts uh I want to I I want to I want them to consider rust as a possibility not only solidity and when they consider rust that should be using near stuff like that um and that's know that's what is you know leading us and hopefully eventually they will this post dogs the professor will have their own courses and they will you know add near

14. 6:33

    so long-term near should be part of the conver the academic conversation with creating innovation in in blockchain I similarly all every single proposal will be posted before approval in your social so everyone can attest everyone can say what they think ER and we also have some Partnerships right the main partnership is a protocol team a bog team where we're working with them they agree to be the the team that will review on the very technical level will e each

15. 7:04

    research team so they don't they don't necessarily do the reviewing but they will put the other departments in near that will review this proposal for us so they they become like the the Clearing House for analyzing these proposals these the guys are about to to post um they are already looking at the one from Stanford they're already looking for the one University of California and the

16. 7:27

    Santa Barbara will start looking soon now the near business school this this is very new this we thinking about this but many of the blockchain clubs are not developers right are the economies economics schools Business Schools management schools so it kind of didn't fit within the the def Mission because we are about bringing developers but then you know we're not focusing a little more in Founders and this part of of of of helping Developers become Founders so it started to make more and

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    more sense so we've been talking with multiple you know universities and we are as we'll start to the hearing the first proposals and but we will do it in partnership with other Departments of near right the other areas of near so we don't judge on the on the business M of these ideas but we will rely on the near ecosystem other like near Foundation Horizon proximity whoever can give it back so this so we

18. 8:33

    can fund this University clubes we are already started to talk with LSC mostly in in in England a few schs in England that they have clubs that are not necessarily um blockchain Rel B technical development related also oh we already have the pick up the conversation with in Harbor so there the the interest is there but we needed to make it work within the def overall mission but that it's happening I think by Spring 2024 we will have the first proposal approved and we're

19. 9:05

    talking mostly in UK but also H University Los in Colombia and one University in Mexico and United States are interested in looking into this so yeah we been talking they focusing Finance schools are focus in finance and business economics and management H this is the main idea how helping developers become Founders helping these guys to become you know to launch their their business into within the near ecosystem and you know helping

20. 9:37

    you know cross the CH the CM right make it to the other find a find a a bridge head and start you know getting the their business up and running and similarly anything else every single proposal will be post on on the social DV and everyone will be able to look at it and give up attestation and their their opinion about it ER we we are uh I actually have a recently very recent

21. 10:02

    meetings some B's some accelerator is a busc group in in Du University they're really interested in doing this with us so we will bring also strle Partners to help us you know fine tune this so we can as make help these developers become Founders oh and there is also been interest from government that they they they want to see how they can get involved and you know in this process so there now we

22. 10:32

    have the boot camps the there are students not not only in universities so there are other institutions that doesn't give accredited courses but they do have very good developers very very well very good developers as well so we are also wanting to engage with them so we are already talking with three of them ER mostly two of them in Spain one in Latin America and is the the approach is the following basically they usually have a tracks

23. 11:07

    within existing boot camps or they are open to run a near specific boot camps in any case it will be either an open web stock or a Boss track or full course or rust based tracks or C so they are they are open to both to both ER tracks right right so two there's two ways we can do that right um um we are you know having the near only developer programs is an issue because it's not well known

24. 11:39

    in some areas but we're pushing also for that but I think that near only will be based mostly rust SM contracts boss will probably will be a part a track of a 16 course they already have um again every single proposal will be in in in in in near social then so certified developer program um first cohort just started we launch with open we Academy a pilot um he and he would be part of the de centralized def RS so we we will run similar with China Korea Korea and Mexico so we're

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    already conversation with with all of them so the idea here is default creates becomes a certifier the it we don't want to certify students we want to certify projects or institutions or teams of people that want to certify our people so we create a common curriculum it's not it's kind of flexible it's not like very well very rigid curriculum but if one project like for example open wet Academy want to certifi within this

26. 12:50

    program they have to cover a specific areas and we are having even different levels right like uh the level one level two level three so it can be more difficult it will be more difficult so we want to make it more professional so we created this framework we are trying this framework with open wet Academy is in the is in the proposal in the in in near social you can read it uh and we are trying to make it the standard for

27. 13:21

    every single institution that want to certify developers with us they have to implement the same curriculum is is not very rigid but is there is some at least some baseline for everyone so why this because we talk with a lot of the students and they felt that it wasn't consistency they didn't they didn't know what exactly meant to be a near developer what is boss or what is Ross so we want to give the students a baseline to know that they are putting

28. 13:52

    their time in something that is actually practical and usable within the ecosystem so we are we are becoming like the beon okay if you want to near learn near this is what you need to learn you pick who it could be open w Academy the Chinese the fs whoever but this is what it means to learn near so that's that's the the the the reason we're doing it like this again every single proposal will be public available read about it if you want to run your own program

29. 14:25

    there are plenty of examples how to do it you can come to us read it so that's that's the proposal we have Partnerships we are open Weare Academy is running the first uh pilot the chinaese death rails are offer it the Korean death rails they really like it and so they want to ruin the Brazil death rails too H so we are partnering with them there are all Partners here there will be the ones

30. 14:48

    actually doing the teing and we are working with the chard dos because the certificates will be some bound nfts so we are working with them actually creating this the the credentials so that's it that's what what we be doing H these are the main programs we're pushing for this we've only been doing this for a couple three months um I'm I'm you know I'm working heavily on on this program but also a St that is sitting there she's a person you have to talk if you want to get your

31. 15:19

    thing up and running um yeah so knocker door in any of the areas if you want to be a blockchain club if you want to run your own Academy if you want to H more interest on the business side please come to us we're open to hear your your proposal so yeah that's it thank you very much and I'll be around if you need have any questions thank you all right we got finished a little early but I'm going to announce the next

32. 16:04

    speaker it's Max Mitzy from uh Major League hacking I'm used to saying mlh and not everybody knows what mlh is especially from the US so um max come up on stage we're uh GNA be talking today about the web 3 build incubator Fellowship that uh mlh did with near Horizon and then after that it'll be followed by a panel with some of the fellows actually so welcome thank you Bianca let me just get set up

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    here all right so as Bianca said here to talk about uh a partnership that started this summer between the near Horizon um group and Major League hacking so I will dive straight into it let's see which way takes us forward here awesome so the web 3 incubator Fellowship it's been known by a few different GES over the last few months um but it's all the same program the idea is to engage um with early career developers and bring web

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    three ideas to life um so I'm just going to skip forward real quick and just talk about the the major Le hacking of the mlh community um not everyone uh knows about us we have about 150,000 active members um and we think about active members is people each year who are attending mlh programs events hackathons workshops and some of the more immersive programs um like like this um fellowship program we did a lot of co-contribution programs as well as the hackathons that

35. 17:37

    we're well known for um and through all of that have built the world's largest community of early career technologists uh spanning over 95 countries 4,000 universities one in three new computer science grads in the US um and a huge amount of diversity uh you know both across the world in terms of people from different backgrounds um one of the really interesting stats that I want to

36. 18:00

    share here is that within our community um in the last year about 15% that's one 15% have built an app in web 3 um that's not very um enthusing really for this kind of community but there's another stat that comes with that um that I think paints it in a very different light which is that about 60% of our community want to build their first web three app in the next year so there's a huge untapped potential of these student

37. 18:31

    and early career developers to bring them into ecosystems um you know really be their first experience um in web 3 in the blockchain world so jumping back quickly um the what is the mission of the partnership um what this partnership was all about in in in the world of Jared Barnes um to harness the talent and creativity of early career and student developers to grow the near developer base and convert Builders into Founders

38. 19:02

    and ultimately taking you know ideas from the student Community to the main net all right let's get into how we do this this program really consisted of of of kind of two main parts the first part um is a hackathon um it was a uh weekend long uh virtual hackathon event with you know talks and workshops and lots of Engagement um from the near team from the from the near Community um and pulling in lots of the mlh community um that hackathon was your application

39. 19:36

    process to get into the three-month incubator program um so four winning teams the the best of all the projects that we saw throughout the throughout the hackathon um got into the fellowship program which is an immersive 12-week program um folks were spending you know 20 30 plus hours each week working on their projects in their teams with mentorship with pod Leaders with talks with workshops and lots of different opportunities um and then you know post

40. 20:11

    program like what happens next the the idea of this program is to bring people into the community bring people into the ecosystem and provide them opportunities once they've built out um you know a formal kind of prototype and and an early product to really stay in the community and continue to um to do other activ one of them being um neon you know a lot of people say where where are the founders now and I say they're right here they're in this room they're

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    they're in Lisbon um they are here to um to continue building their networks continue shaping their ideas and we're going to hear a lot more about that uh later so let let's dive into these two components of the program uh the web 3 build hackathorn so you know this is this is the the bread and butter of of of mlh running hackathorn um we had around 900 people registered their

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    interest in the hackathon um onboarded over 300 new web 3 developers into the near and boss ecosystem something that we're very proud of um and you know as well as being a great event to bring new developers and hackers into the ecosystem this is also a huge um marketing and and brand building initiative right tens of thousands of mlh community members heard about this event not only that it was taking place but also the outcomes of it the winners the prizes huge Spotlight put on all of

43. 21:28

    that work done um we had over 30 project submissions throughout the weekend completed project submissions that met the criteria and through a judging process we we identified all of the right people and all of the right ideas to take through that incubator program people who had the right commitment who had the right ideas had the right technical knowledge and um you know who had that that Innovative spark that between mlh and and the near Horizon

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    team we're looking for so who who who showed up to this hackathon um well the average age was 22.5 um so you know a really young crowd spread from kind of you know 17 18 through to like mid 20s um about 80% undergraduate um student level um and about 75% of people opted in to to you know to to hear more and to stay part of the of the near Community one of the really interesting things that we saw here and tied back to the fact that you

45. 22:26

    know only a small percentage people have already started building in web 3 is that on a scale of 0 to four the average rating of familiarity with web 3 was 1.5 which is really interesting right people were coming to this event not because they're experts not because they're you know they're going to win big bounties and and they've been doing this for years but because they they wanted to get their start they wanted to

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    go from like you know a one out of four to a two to a three out of out of four and really build their familiarity and understanding of web three so what happened next we took four programs and 14 four projects and 14 Founders from the hackathon into this uh into this incubator style program um it's a 12we immersive incubator program that provides a real world environment for these teams and Founders to shape their ideas build out their projects and

47. 23:24

    lay the groundwork um for them to launch Ventures every who came into this program uh you know was really thinking about themselves as a Founder for the first time understanding what that means thinking about Building Technology from you know the scrappy kind of project that wins a hackathon through to a product that you can sit down with uh you know with a VC and pitch for funding

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    that's a huge shift and journey that people had to go through uh for components to the program that supported people going through that Journey there's a lot of facilitation so we have a pod leader structure you know regular standups weekly uh like Sprint planning office hours async troubleshooting all of the ways that that typically in this kind of ecosystem people would be building their projects a whole bunch of

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    resources um project grants access to Horizon credits Business mentorship technical mentorship um training uh so asynchronous you know LMS Based training as well as talks coaching online learning PS all the things that people really need to to get from you know to get from their first attempt at at at building out a web three Pro uh project through to having something that that

50. 24:37

    you know they can pitch and demo the last piece is really about feedback and iteration we're big Believers in this kind of cohort-based Project based learning um model that people need regular engagement and feedback so we structured a lot of the program around having monthly demos where all of the teams should sit down and actually demo what they've worked on get feedback use

51. 25:00

    that for their Sprint planning you know treating a lot of the the near Horizon team almost as their earli adopter customers right finding out what they wanted to see next which I think was hugely valuable in steering and Direction setting and all of the kind of pivots that that the team's went on that we're going to hear more about uh later on so quickly introducing the projects uh two of the projects are here to to

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    speak for themselves uh right after this this intro uh and two others we going to we're going to cover with some of the mlh team who are here um so the four products were medbridge transpack storehub and tradem Min some of them have even changed their branding and names throughout the program so so some some real startup experience here it's really interesting that we saw a very wide mix of different um you know web 3

53. 25:47

    and blockchain use cases from you know deploying smart contracts to manage um you know to manage like contractual agreements and processes through through to uh data storage and security through to e-commerce um you know through to almost like trade Finance so a lot of the use cases that you've heard about throughout this event have actually been quite organically um identified by a

54. 26:12

    group of of of hackers as um as interesting areas to deploy um web 3 and blockchain Technology uh I'm not going to introduce everyone here in person uh some of the folks are here in the audience some of the folks are here um on the panel shortly if you see any of the any of these people around you know make sure to say hi to them at the event um we had fellows from all over the world so so spanning from Egypt to India to Hong

55. 26:37

    Kong to Canada to us to Nigeria um you know a a huge breath of of people from across the mlh community being part of this program um you know not only you know being hackathon winners but actually completing uh you know all 12 weeks of the program um six countes represented NPS of 83 which represents you know not only the work that that we at mlh have done but also all of the support and engagement from the near and near Horizon team 100% of the

56. 27:10

    individuals and projects completed the program which is phenominal you never see 100% completion scores on these sorts of pages and there's 100% interest from all of the participants and continuing to build on near um again lots of lots of folks are here lots of people are working out how to take their Ventures forward working out what um you know what Ventures they're going to work

57. 27:33

    on next so you know going back to that kind of that mission and ambition of building awareness of of the near um ecosystem and the blockchain operating system tick right over 900 people were so interested they signed up for an event over 300 new um developers on boarded we've uh We've identified and nurtured some really high potential student entrepreneurs and taken them a significant way on their Journey you know towards becoming uh you know the startup founders of the future um I'm

58. 28:06

    gonna I'm going to stop with the the monologue here I think you know the best way to bring this to life is to bring some of the folks on stage um have a conversation about the program The Experience the project that they've built um you know and what they're going on to do next other than um having made the journey from three different continents um to be here in in in Lisbon and speak to you all today so uh thank you very much for listening um I'm going

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    to welcome my uh my panel onto the stage and uh and we'll get into much more interesting discussion than uh than I can cover on my own

60. 29:31

    so yeah yeah you got do come on up FKS all right here we go um I'd like to start with some intros um so let's let's go across the group here um yeah what what I'd love to hear you know just a little bit about yourself uh and your your background we'll get we'll get into the projects and all of that stuff next so uh yeah Michael could you kick us off yeah so I'm Michael I studied finance and business at the University of Toronto in Canada and currently I'm interning at

61. 30:09

    cloudbreak Pharma which is a round D pharmaceutical company in Hong Kong and I'm helping them IPO at their finance office so I first became interested in web3 through this hackathon and I can't wait to tell you more about my experience throughout the fellowship um hi I'm Franklin from Nigeria I study statistics in unity in Nigeria um I learned about this hackaton from mail I received from M and yes I can't wait to

62. 30:34

    tell you more about hi everyone I'm will I run the mlh fellowship program so it's my responsibility to make sure these two have a fantastic experience and hopefully I'll be able to give you a little bit more insight into what the program structur is like and uh yeah what they got up to so you might be wondering why we've got an mlh colleague on on the panel here um two two of our projects couldn't be here in person you

63. 30:58

    know due to other commitments and some of the logistical challenges of of getting across the world um so really Will's going to cover two roles one to talk about the experience that mlh had working with near no pressure folks uh and two to represent some of the experience and the learnings and the outcomes of the the other two projects that um that couldn't be here today so um we've covered a little bit about um about yourselves um and and the event I'd love to learn about um you know

64. 31:30

    personally What attracted um What attracted both of you to to the program uh you know to the hackathon to the incubator program and actually to to trying out working in in web 3 yourselves For the First Time Michael would you want to kick us off yeah so I've been doing hackathons for a while now over 20 of them most of them mlh and I just saw this email notification about this web 3 build hackathon sponsored by near and I thought oh that's really cool like I've heard about Bitcoin I've heard of ethereum but what's this near token

65. 32:00

    sort of thing so I thought that because the other cryptos are sort of more well established now there isn't that much upside so that's why I decided to give this rather unknown chain a bit of a chance and that's what attracted me to this Fellowship there's a high upside and I always want to learn more about web 3 so this is a good opportunity to do that all so um yeah I always wanted to learn about web 3 so it was one reason why we joined and then you know

66. 32:23

    like most people um want to be found out but then you you don't know how to go about it you didn't know how to get started so when we saw that um the incubator program was part of the um advantages of the producing so that was one of the reasons why we applied awesome all right I think it's it's time to get into the project I'm gonna start with Will at the end here um could you just give us an overview of the um of the two of the two other

67. 32:47

    projects yeah so the two other projects were medy bridge and transpa act uh medbridge was kind of targeting uh how Healthcare records were a little bit fragmented they're kind of hard to access and so they were using blockchain to make it easier to have you know one like you know one set of Records everyone can access but also you know having that security behind it and then there was transpa which we're looking at uh

68. 33:10

    contracts and how you can make that both transparent while being secure as the name sort of implies so kind of two different angles but uh both you know with like interesting problems to solve Franklin okay yeah so stub is a oneclick e-commerce solution yeah with features like um co-ownership um social media integration and um it's built on here because of um the security and also

69. 33:36

    to enable Fiat payment yeah the um stub is targeted as small businesses small and grown businesses um we are looking to migrate your business from social media into like um something to have like an inventory system and yeah Franklin tell tell us a bit more about the inspiration what what what are some of the problems that you saw that that you felt like skub could solve okay so

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    um um I don't know how businesses work like outside Africa but in Africa most um students um people who really don't own a store or own a very small store they they want to um they want to sell their product and most time they rely on social media especially like WhatsApp okay so um one of the things that we noticed was that if you if you put your business on WhatsApp after like a while

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    maybe in six months you cannot tell how much youve made if you own the business with a friend um one person has to control it and then you cannot have another person it's like a problem with that if people wanted to pay you with um crypto they could be like a problem with that and so we we thought about what could be the solution for this small businesses okay so the first thing we thought about was to have like um a CO integration feature where um two people

72. 34:46

    can co-own a store and then Al so you can own a store with your friend and then have like 50 50% so where you can make both decisions equally you could also like employ maybe salesperson and then giv like 30% access to the store and then we also um um another thing was um sorry let me um get right so one other um thing that we thought about was the um payments okay so most of the times when um when they have like the whole you could make payment and and

73. 35:20

    this the own hasn't received the money or so we want to start like that middle man so they make the payment to us and then we make today yeah awesome I this is this is such a good example of one where there are huge opportunities in emerging markets that don't exist in markets like the US for example and two where using this kind of virtual distributed program allows you to bring ideas in from all around the world that's that's that's really awesome to hear Michael tell tell us more about tell us more about your your your

74. 35:52

    project and The Inspirations that yeah sure it so Trad m started as an IP management platform one of our team members during The hackathon Works in a VC firm and one of the most tedious and annoying things to do in VC is preparing all the documents for managing IP as well as exchanging IP So currently for example if you're in the US if you want to exchange a patent with somebody or you want to purchase a patent you must

75. 36:18

    first file a very long form with the United States patment and trademark office and it's not even web2 it's like a very basic form where you have to like mail and document it's it's very annoying so we created Trad Min to have a web 3 onchain solution where the data is freely available and it's transparent and you always know who has ownership of what so that was the inspiration behind

76. 36:39

    Trad Min awesome um we'll we'll get more in some of the kind of features and stuff in detail later on but I want to take a step back and get a little bit into the experience of the program itself um so we talked a bit about how you heard about it um let's get into the first stage of the of the program um Michael do you want to kick us off like what was the what was the launch hackathon like that weekend long

77. 37:02

    hackathon where you really I guess had your onramp into the into the into the near the world of near talk to us about your hackathon experience yeah well it was really fun but a little bit stressful it was actually during Canada day so I had to balance that along with the festivities but I thought it was really it was really interesting how we could basically create these smart contracts just using JavaScript which is a language I'm familiar with so I

78. 37:26

    thought that was something very new to me that you could just code these smart contracts in JavaScript and also it was sort of a rush to get everything done because my team members are also busy that weekend and in the end I'm glad that we were able to submit something on time okay so um sry could you ask a question again yeah of course yeah the experience of the hackathon the weekend

79. 37:49

    long hackathon yeah so it was it was interesting but then like there was there was no time it was like very short time so we had to to we had to walk overnight but like we had the idea overnight we had the idea like previously and so um when we started working and we had we are like four some of those working on like a smart contract and then two others working on the front end and then we we we almost didn't submit it was the time was very

80. 38:13

    short but we could s something uh will do you have anything do you have anything you want to add from from the mlh side I know we had a lot of really strong engagement from from the near team like running workshops um you know doing the the open ceremonies in the judging in collaboration yeah people were really really interested in this event um especially with the fact that there was the hack uh the incubator part as the

81. 38:36

    prize so we saw lots of really interesting projects and I know the near team can vouch for this like it was difficult to judge there was a lot of competition um and so yeah it was definitely difficult to narrow it down to just four projects uh for the actual incubator program um but yeah seeing so many people kind of just jump on this bandwagon and just get super involved was really really cool uh yeah I think I mean I I think I'd add

82. 38:59

    to it there's there was an interesting new model that we set up here um you know what what we've heard time and again here at mlh is that it's very difficult to build a substantial web three project in the scope of a hackathon with that time pressure you know with the feeling of the clock ticking especially when it's like uh you know only a few days long um so so one of the things that we we we did here was

83. 39:22

    actually to instead of putting a bounty on a hackathon put a prize of of getting into a sort of incubation accelerator type program um which is which is a really different Paradigm I think it was incredibly successful you see there was a lot of motivation to get there even stress to get projects over the line and uh and get them all submitted um I want to ask both of the both of the the

84. 39:45

    fellows the program participants here what did it feel like when you heard that you won oh it felt like amazing like since I didn't come from a web three background I didn't think that we would be able to make anything happen in just the weekend but through persistence and staying up till like 5:00 am. we were able to pull through and submit it so I was just elated that my team was able to win entry into the incubator program for me for me it was Unreal like

85. 40:12

    I never participated in a hackaton before but then I never thought we could win one like I I see hackaton everywhere and I think that do people even really win this so like when we won it was it was like we couldn't sleep that night I didn't eat it was that interesting amazing I love it s sounds like a a potentially life-changing moment for both of you um so we transition from the hackathon into the into the incubator

86. 40:36

    program so you're you're paired up with your pod leaders you're you're in your Podge everybody's on boarded starting to go through the the the training and the content with with the near team um how how did that program support the development of your project so so building out your product and your technology um you know how did the the the framework of that of that um of that

87. 41:00

    program help you build out your idea yeah so it's difficult building on blockchain for the first time and without the support of technical mentors like Ken from near it would have been very difficult for us to build anything the documentation is not very mature now so that was very helpful from a technical perspective from a business perspective this was our first time trying to build a product out of a hackathon project which is very

88. 41:23

    difficult and very different from the traditional hackathon experience so with help from mentors from both near and mlh we were able to think about the business aspect of things like go to market plans and Pitch decks and what are your users and where is this going to go so for that I'm super thankful for everyone at the near foundation and mlh for getting us through the process I mean yeah like you said the technical side was always like interesting weend

89. 41:48

    um the business side we never like we just build projects and leave them so thinking about building a project to become a product like it was it was so interesting and then having like help um I never thought about um so there's one question we Hadad one time how do you get how do you intend to get your first 100 users like we never thought about things like that good Market strategy yeah it was interesting and then there was always like this form of accountability with the meetings so we

90. 42:12

    had like P meetings Monday Wednesdays Fridays and then we had like standups so if you if you didn't do anything like in the weekend there's going to be retrospective on Monday so you just pushed something and so I can say I did something so I I feel like the whole incubator program was was really helpful ining the project awesome so we we've talked a bit about about mentorship about technical support about um

91. 42:34

    learning some of the business fundamentals right thinking about a go to market thinking about your users that's something nobody's ever done in a hackathon before so I love to hear all of that U and and I guess the accountability um structure of being in a in a program like this um what are some of the other key things that that we were thinking about will um as as as we were as we were running through this program making sure these these projects were going to flourish yeah there was

92. 43:00

    like sort of two interesting aspects right uh like the fellows already said right it's difficult to like get stuck in with web 3 right and like build a full project quickly right it's like a completely new paradigm lots of new ways of thinking right so took a little bit of time for fellows to ramp up the near team provided loads of useful curriculum and uh mentorship and like they said like we're building World near building

93. 43:24

    so there's like things are changing as we're get changing so there was sort of that challenge too that it's also new that like people don't necessarily know right now um so that's like one interesting aspect and then the other is like the program provided a really nice accountability piece for the fellow so like the others mentioned we had like standups three times a week a weekly retrospective as well as demos every three uh every four weeks and so that

94. 43:49

    really kind of like gave the fellows a nice structure you know they weren't just like right I've got my project I have some ideas now I just got to like you know somehow turn it into a finished product somehow you know that structure and that framework really helped them uh you know make sure they were progressing and they weren't like oh I'll just do it next week I'll just do it next week and before you know it it's been like three or four months and you've not actually done anything so to see them you know

95. 44:13

    take their projects from even the first demo in our fourth week of the program to the last week you could really see how that accountability really help their projects grow and improve awesome so we we've we've talked a bit about the the program structure the accountability the journey I'd love to get into the meat of some of those um some of those pivots and changes of Direction the evolution of your projects that that you went through um do you want to kick us off Michael with with with how things took shapes I know even

96. 44:43

    even the name of the of the Venture changed throughout the program for your team yeah so initially we were near IP because we were built on near and we were an IP management platform but um we ran into a couple issues with that which is first of all no one knew how to pronounce it like is it near rip is it ni rip like like what is it and also the domain name was like not available near i.org so we went with tradem m.org

97. 45:06

    instead because we wanted this to be a a Marketplace so that's where the trade part comes in and also minting people associate that was with web 3 and also I like the color green so we went with trade mint and um that was the the major pivot in our strategy another thing we had to Pivot was instead of implementing the full Market Place using smart contracts which is very difficult you need to get the approval system right we

98. 45:30

    made it so that users could give patents as sort of a a gift sort of so the basically the negotiation happens on our platform and then once you work at a deal and the final price it's up to the user to initiate the transaction so that was another major feature pivot that we had to go through during the process uh we we we first started as um a web three Shopify but then you always get questions like why should we use you

99. 45:54

    instead of Shopify you know like so um when when when we hear questions like that we start um making like so one feature we thought about was um since this businesses are coming from social media why not have like a social media integration feature where if an order is made on the app then they receive like a message on their social media account so we we first started like web three Shopify but then over time we're adding

100. 46:17

     like other features and right awesome and how about other other pivots from from from the other two projects well can you can you share any any interesting uh Forks in the road or or or bumps on the journey for some of the other teams yeah I mean like an interesting thing we observed with the fellows was that um you know with it being a web free program they were trying to do a lot of things with web free but sometimes that wasn't always

101. 46:41

     like the best approach right some things are really really good in web 3 but other things it's better to you know maybe do it in web two or whatever and it's finding that nice balance and so we sort of Saw across all the teams right a bit of a challenge here where you know some they you know they were like not really sure how to best optimize their projects for what they were trying to build right so uh we gradually saw that like and with the mentorship from the near team they were able to kind of figure out what they were trying to do

102. 47:06

     there um but yeah that sort of the main sort of like pivot point was you know we don't actually need to do everything in web 3 here uh we should just like focus on the bits that web 3 do really really well and you know go all in on that um so you did see a lot of like people rewriting what they were doing right after like week six uh especially from the hacker front right completely different like for what they did then but

103. 47:30

     yeah awesome uh we started talking about building on on web 3 in a bit more detail here so i' I'd love to hear what the I guess what the on-ramp Journey was like for for for both of you as um you know as as going through this program what what did that look like you know getting SED with near um what were some of the the hurdles that you met um and and you know how how did the program

104. 47:56

     help you overcome those yeah so the biggest hurdle in the beginning getting started with the near SDK was we initially wanted to write it in Rust because it's safer and especially if you have Financial transactions which we intended to do with a patent Marketplace it's just better to write it in Rust but the problem is I didn't know rust and none of my team members knew rust so we spent a long time trying to learn rust but we eventually figured out that

105. 48:21

     wasn't the best use of our time and it's kind of better to build an MVP that you can get out into the world with whatever knowledge and tools you have rather than trying to nitpick what what like the new language is or or make the perfect product so like don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good is what I'm trying to say uh so um we had like someone work on the smart contract but um I know that one um problem that we were having was

106. 48:44

     he was asking like what to store on chain and what not to store on chain and then the other one was we didn't want to like give users the whole web three loging te where you have to remember your 12 ke pass for years and so um we did like the web to um login and then on the back end create like a web um in your account for you I I I think that's a a really good example right A lot of people get bugged down as will was saying as well um you know I'm bu I'm

107. 49:08

     building a you know a Dap it's a web three Venture everything's got to be distributed everything's got to you know you got to log in with your wallet sometimes it might actually make sense to keep your you know your your login web to you know use use something off the shelf and then Focus your your time and your efforts and your your development in investment on where you're really really adding value by using a decentralized solution that's really insightful um will is there

108. 49:31

     anything any any other um anything else on the the the onramp and the the journey to build on on web 3 that you you reflect on about the program and and perhaps even um for for us at mlh getting started um on on near as well yeah I mean like we had this curriculum provided by near but uh the curriculum was sort of being developed and changed as near was being developed and changed right and so fellows were having that ramp up onto web 3 um but it was challenging because the resources were

109. 50:04

     limiting Ken did a fantastic job of providing uh you know resources as the fellows were going they were hungry for it right but yeah it's just you know when you try and you know do something of a JavaScript framework right there's plenty of information on the internet right there's years and years of stuff on there it's really easy to pick it up but you know some of the teams like medy bridge and transpack you know they were like okay we've got an idea but we don't actually know how we're going to make

110. 50:28

     this a reality and so yeah seeing that kind of ramp up as they you know use as much documentation as we could get training material and all that yeah we generally found that was sort of the main thing yeah I think I think that's uh that's really interesting you're You're Building um an embryonic product or or company in a fast changing and evolving platform and ecosystem in a completely nent industry so there's lots of levels of uncertainty and change to to be unpacking um

111. 51:03

     throughout the program um awesome so I think will you talked there a bit about like the I guess the the the navigation of of of the the platform and the documentation and all all of that stuff were there any were there any kind of points at which the program actually gave um you valuable insight and and information back to to the near team you know about about that onramp and that that Journey for new developers yeah I think like the key

112. 51:34

     thing right especially with the near Foundation right they want to help get more people into near right and get people using near and so hearing like getting real time feedback from the fellows on oh I'm trying to do this thing how do I do it and it was like oh we don't have any material on that or any documentation we should add that to our Ro map or you know seeing that you know what do users actually want from near and getting that feedback in more

113. 51:59

     detail than you would typically get at like a hackathon which is very like very anecdotal very kind of very simple normally quite gener generic whereas you know the fellows are giving quite in- depth feedback they're like I'm trying to do this very specific thing you know it's I'm having limitations and then you know the team were like oh interesting we can you know either they help them figure it out and then realize we can you know do more documentation maybe new

114. 52:22

     uh resources um or they go actually we doesn't do that right now but maybe that's something you know we could look into in the future yeah really interesting we often talk about these sorts of Fellowship programs as being a captive audience um and the timing of the program launching just after the launch of the blockchain operation system was no coincidence um it it was it was very U it was very intentional I think perhaps the

115. 52:47

     participants didn't realize it at the time but um to some extent you were Guinea pcks U you know of what it's like to build a brand new Venture from from the ground up um in in the blockchain operating system all right we talked a lot about here about some of the the the technical and the onramp into the platform I'd love to hear more about what it feels like for someone from you know pretty typical student background to suddenly be trying to build a venture

116. 53:11

     um can you can you share a bit about that Journey like how how did that go in terms of thinking about building a product for the first time yeah well I've always been thinking more about entrepreneurship and building a company from the ground up rather than working for someone else I think in the current day and age that's probably more stable than most traditional jobs given the economy and whatnot so for me

117. 53:35

     transitioning was not super difficult it was just a change of the set of tools that I was always used to from Web Two to web three uh we we've never like for me I've never had to think about users or I just build like side projects and use them so um thinking about like the business side of things started like opening my mind I never thought like one time of course I wanted to have a startup but it wasn't like in this time you know so transitioning wasn't very

118. 54:00

     easy I mean like you you be in meetings and someone just say why should we use you I said this before why should we use you over Shopify and like you're wondering because you never thought of these kind of things before so it was it wasn't very easy transitioning but like we're here yeah it was interesting looking at all of the projects um because they you know only solely focused on like building technical projects right maybe it's something that they would use um

119. 54:25

     but they hadn't really thought about the wider picture and I think there was an interesting transition of like it's not just about what we do right who actually wants to use these projects and like thinking about potential competitors what already exists out there I mean Michael's already talked about like how they did a bit of a Rebrand and there was a few projects where they were like this already exists what are we actually doing here like we should like focus on

120. 54:48

     that one thing that this other thing doesn't do very well and go all in with that and so I think something that where the program really helped the fellows was like making them think a bit more about all the other stuff right that comes into building a product and helping make sure that they weren't just like wasting their time running like building you know down a rabbit hole realizing that actually no one wants that it's just them uh and you know it's

121. 55:12

     not really something that will you know survive very long in the world awesome yeah I think what I'm hearing from from all of you here and and and and heard throughout the program is it's not so much that you know participants don't have the capabilities to to do uh a competitor analysis or plan a Sprint of development but it's it's perhaps not something that would cross your mind right it's almost that you need prompting um about what to do um so you know right what features are

122. 55:44

     you going to build over the next two weeks the next month um write them in a list prioritize them you know that kind of prompting um can be really really helpful as well um in terms of getting you thinking um right uh as as we're starting to get towards the end of the time here I want to ask um I want to ask all of you here um I'll start with Michael again what moment were you most proud of throughout

123. 56:09

     the program I think the moment that the smart contracts actually started working and we could read and write data from it and it showed up on the command line I was like oh my God this technology is actually real it actually works it's not just like some madeup thing in cyberspace so I think that was the proudest moment especially since I had to work really hard on it and also asked for help from the mentors from near so it was just a really good feeling when it finally worked out uh for us was uh

124. 56:31

     the last speech the last um demo um because we were trying to work on a particular feature to make sure it was available before then and then like we were we were in like another city we were trying to like apply for visa and we walking and like everything and then on the peach day like we did like super well and yeah we very proud about that the pictures are definitely awesome um well I know you ran a a graduation ceremony you you talked to to lots of

125. 56:55

     the participants about their their some of their proudest moments are there any that that you can reflect on here yeah I mean like a lot of them had the same thought as Franklin right that final demo especially because we did it with um outli Adventures where they gave the fellows loads of useful feedback and insight know there was a little bit more pressure there they're like oh I you

126. 57:12

     know I want to make sure this is a good pitch um and yeah hearing the fellow's reactions afterwards they were you know over the moon uh they felt very you know like we've actually you know built something that's polished you know has a clear goal of what it's trying to achieve uh and it makes sense to people who aren't us who spent all day every day living in it so you know that you know the demo piece is often you know overlooked by developers but you know

127. 57:38

     they got so much value out of that especially when we like compared it to their original demos they did in week three and they're like wow I barely had a slide deck I went on a ramble about what the project actually was no one really followed what I was saying um but once I got a little bit coached on how to do that demo right right I felt like you know I came out of the program and was like yeah I know how to you know think of all the things right U yeah

128. 58:01

     really interesting to sort of see that perspective from them so let's let's get into the demos we we we structured the program around these monthly demos the final one was really the the kind of the the end of the program a celebration of what you've done and an opportunity to share that not only with the wider near ecosystem but also with with some uh with some potential investors um can you both tell me a little bit about um about

129. 58:26

     what you demoed right like what was the functionality that you you had built at that point um you know what were you able to put forward and show the world yeah so we got basically all the features that we wanted to get working working by the demo so that was really good we were able to log in using the near wallet and users could upload a patent to the blockchain and they could see other people's patents and also send patents to uh a near wallet address so

130. 58:49

     that was what we demoed during the demo and we were really proud that it worked uh for us like we we only missed at one feature which was like the social media integration feature but then there was one big one we were planning to work on and it was the integration feature we had that already because like in the previous demo we had like zero feature just like just log in it was almost like a landing page but then at that time we built like the social media integration feature enable users upload product and

131. 59:14

     other in Comm SE and checkout system so some some pretty fully fledged um prototype MVP type product I I I saw some fantastic pitch decks some some business strategies in there as well as some technical products so uh so fantastic uh my last question here as as we wrap the session uh hopefully getting back on time here for Bianca is um what happens next what what are the plans for yourselves in the ecosystem and for your

132. 59:44

     for your projects well I think we're going to actually get the marketplace functioning where you can give approval to the marketplace to move the patents for you other than that I'm excited to keep building the new ecosystem we already have something to do with street wear and merchandise which I think will be really cool yeah for us we we we have like a road map from now to in February we plan to launch an MVP so um the key thing for us is to have the social media

133. 1:00:08

     integration future working and then like we have a plan on how to unboard the first 100 users and then plan to launch by February so as well as being here in Lisbon talking about the project Michael's already building the the next set of Ventures Franklin's got a a road map to to public launch an MVP uh pretty phenomenal any final thoughts will from from what's next for the other two projects yeah so Med brid are already they're thinking have taken some time

134. 1:00:33

     off college and university so they can go you know really take medbridge to the next level and transpa to started to meet up with web free communities in India they're starting to speak to other Founders other people in the community and get as much feedback as they possibly can so they can really understand who wants transact and how they can make it as best as possible so it's really cool to see these both you

135. 1:00:56

     know both these projects even though the program ended back in September you know really eager to take their projects to the next level and keep building them and obviously we've got the pipeline into the hzn 2 cohort in January as well to think about here uh thank you all for your time fantastic to have you uh and share some of the insights here if anyone wants to get in touch with any of the projects um you know check out the slide check out some of the materials coming out soon from the near Foundation

136. 1:01:20

     group as well thank you all for for listening all right uh super excited who had issues on boarding when they first started doing something in web 3 okay pretty much everybody right so I'm very excited about this talk from Luis FAS of M base who is going to be talking about fixing some of the onboarding issues so we don't have blockers for new users come on stage where do I get the controller this

137. 1:02:19

     one okay got it all right hey everyone my name is Lu um and yeah I'm here to talk a bit about things that mint base is trying to use or do to fix onboarding and uh pretty much uh resolving some of the unboarding issues we faced um um you know uh with crypto so mint base has been around for a while we've been trying many things we tried so many experiments and I want to talk I want to first talk a bit about Mina and it stems from minting in an

138. 1:02:50

     instant right so users can come to the app pretty much just take a picture mint mint a token and then share it on a general feed um this is a perfect experience for anyone you know just getting onboarded uh it's the 0er to1 nft experience users uh generally understand so we started this uh last year we we tried it a few in a few events and we learned a few things we learned that uh many people don't really have access to funds uh we learned that

139. 1:03:22

     there's a bunch of crypto curious people that are in crypto conferences but they don't have crypto uh we learned that there are um people afraid to connect to apps that they don't really trust yet and that I think that's pretty wise and then the best one for me is like there Ledger at home you know like uh sounds like an excuse but probably isn't because well yeah I mean uh some people just interface with apps through ledgers uh

140. 1:03:47

     or Hardware wallets so we took all of these things we learned and we changed a few things well just pretty much pretty much two things uh we changed how how easy it is to create an account and how easy it is to Mint tokens without any funds so if you I know a bunch of people who here already tried this but for those who didn't uh feel free to scan the QR code and and try this app or just

141. 1:04:11

     visit mint. mint base. XYZ i' would love to show up in the the feed now so I want to see some phones scanning the QR code thank you but yeah so um time is limited but for you on getting on boarded from Mina you'll also notice that we have the mint based wallet uh which is a new thing I'll introduce in a couple slides and for the developers interested to play around with this uh there is this reple

142. 1:04:35

     called uh minsta so go to github.com minb minsta it's um this experience you get the wallet experience you get everything for free and uh yeah we just want to see more Forks of this and um experiments in general but yeah the wallet so what is what is our wallet and what are the things that we're doing with a wallet that is quite different from uh other wallets in the space so going through through the the

143. 1:05:01

     Min experience you notice that um yeah sorry so uh you'll see that transactions are free so we're leveraging meta transactions and metat transactions does essentially mean that the users can sign the transaction and then some other account the relater account in this case will sponsor the cost of this transaction um this is quite important because in the future we plan to open up uh the relayer for pretty much everyone

144. 1:05:26

     uh to like do things so let's say a user can sponsor their users um transactions or a company that wants to get that onboard users they can do it too for now mint base is covering the cost of mints of transactions and um yeah we're also using web auon or web authorization and pass keys to store Key pair securely on user device this on on iPhones it looks like this so you you store it on your keychain and then signing transactions you can do it via face ID on your computer might be fingerprint or

145. 1:05:57

     passphrase there are several ways it's a web standard it's pretty secure and of course we use human readable names too um to create U well human readable names um thanks to near and how how does all this work um some people are probably not comfortable yet with the the near um the near account system but let me just cover a bit of how it works so you go through the mint based wallet you create a key pair on your laptop with permissions for everything so it's

146. 1:06:26

     a full access key and then you might create a function uh full access key to on your phone that has permissions to sign any transaction right so in case your cell phone is lost you can still with the key paare one you can you can revoke the access to Keir 2 uh and then when you buy a new phone you can generate a new Keir for that phone in in in case you you don't really trust the app you're connecting to you might be able to create a function call Key so it has limited permissions for for example this one uh it's a VR

147. 1:06:59

     headset function call Key and the only permission to the app is just minting right but this is this is just the beginning we're just starting to um you know experimenting with uh the wallet uh simple experiences but we have bigger plans for the future and we want to facilitate even more like the onboarding experience and the crypto experience in general and our plans is to let users use everyday language for everything

148. 1:07:22

     right um how can you do this that um we learned uh a new thing that that's quite recent called function calling um on llms so chat GPD for example supports this and essentially you can convert natural language into API calls or database queries or even extract structur data from uh from text uh so we went on and built two plugins one called action and the other search so action allows you to transform queries into database queries submit that uh sorry transform a prompt into a

149. 1:07:56

     database query submit that and get the result as you can see here so on the right that would be like the normal developer way and then on the left it's pretty much the same result but you're just prompting with natural language and then uh mint Bas Action allows you to do the same thing but for transactions on Shan so no need to code just say I want to send this token to this account and it will do it for

150. 1:08:20

     you since uh chat GPT and open AI have like very tric policies we cannot really um do onchain main net transactions so we had to build a a solution and thanks for Alex kov to like shout you know shout out uh mint based AI uh yesterday it's free um for now um mint based AI um lets you use J chat GPT for Turbo start since this week and I want to show you a couple of prompts um and how this works I had like demo prepped but like this is super you know I don't have lot of time

151. 1:08:54

     here so let's just uh scroll through some of the the the potential prompts you can use you can ask what's my account and you'll have your your your address you'll see which network you're connected to and you'll see the balance uh you can also ask what tokens do I own in my collection and well summarized 24 tokens on Main ad that's cool and now I want to see some more details right so if you want if you ask show me details it still keeps the context of the previous prompts and

152. 1:09:18

     we'll show you like detailed details about each token on your collection you can also ask it to generate images this is not on chain but every image generated is stored on R weave so it's sort of on chain I asked it to like generate an image of ran Morty not sure about the copyright here but that's fine and then I can ask I want to Mint this token on my contract and it will combine two function calls one submit query to see if I have any

153. 1:09:43

     contract to Mint on and then generate a transaction uh to which I can minid and that's it so how can this be applied to the onboarding experience well users can just go through this and learn how to use uh safely in a playground environment but in the future we want to like educate even more right so we want to use um for example this right so you want want to sign transaction this is one of the biggest problems to users right that they sign

154. 1:10:08

     transactions sometimes that they don't really know anything about and uh that might be an issue so yeah we want to let users just ask what are this they're signing signing and get uh a description of U the transaction so this is it still have two minutes so um yeah mint base is also starting the cohort mint base grants uh in um soon so if you have any idea you're building some project and you're excited about nfds and crypto and improving user experiences uh go to

155. 1:10:38

     github.com int based gr grants program and um yeah submit your PR and uh we'll be reviewing and uh giving you feedback soon have a minute so thank you uh please follow these accounts mine specially uh I don't know I don't know if I have time for Q&A here but still have a minute 30 minutes 30 seconds is there any question good so you you submit a proposal uh with your the amount of of funding and uh what your what are your plans and what you want to build and yeah I think that's it there's the guidelines very

156. 1:11:24

     specific and they're detailed on the on the yeah sure sure well I mean that's that's a very broad question I think uh but the vision again is simplifying as as much as possible and uh the goal is you know reducing even more the the complexity of using crypto that's kind of like I think the bigger Vision so using new Tac like AI to simplify that as much as possible I think that's it thank you so

157. 1:12:00

     much uh yeah all right we've reached almost the end last but not least we'll welcome the last speakers here one quick announcement uh this stage closes right after this uh this talk right here and then we will be heading over to um headquarters uh where all the hackathon awards and presentations will be done uh so make sure to head over that way so who went to one of the side events this

158. 1:12:36

     week oh come on really three people went to a side event yeah okay so um I'm really happy to be welcoming proof of Vibes Aunt Marshall and Russ Ballard to talk about how in real life events can really help scale the ecosystem check check 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 Aunt Marshall is it good evening I don't know it's good evening somebody somewhere somewhere so yeah let's jump

159. 1:13:17

     into it I'm Russ uh co-founder and chief Vibe officer over at proof of Vibes super excited to 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 U what do Vibes mean on Chain man I I I really think we just take a step backwards and figure out how we came to this point right what happened how did we get to even bringing Vibes on chain

160. 1:13:48

     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

161. 1:14:12

     we know what's 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

162. 1:14:35

     verification about an event before you get there let alone understanding The Vibes aspect of it and how it translate to in-person 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 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

163. 1:14:59

     in bed I literally was doing this was like open a 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 to the rest of the world we really need like simple simple onboarding approaches and that's really where this came in it

164. 1:15:29

     was like you know we were honored by what POA did in the in the early days which was really simple to 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 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

165. 1:16:02

     that so you ask 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 can hit the next slide we have a little clicker 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 identity through IRL events what is a did VC's verifiable credential strategic Partnerships quality verification and Med and revenue

166. 1:16:31

     models what does all that mean so part of the problem we're looking at right again we're talking about scale uh for me uh 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 turn albums with rockus records turn MTV show uh 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

167. 1:17:07

     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 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 anymore right and they've heard about web 3 they

168. 1:17:38

     want to come into it but they need a 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 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 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

169. 1:18:10

     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 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 Bal 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

170. 1:18:36

     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 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 under ated and I think under represented uh Collective and Niche yeah and just to give out some examples of

171. 1:18:59

     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 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 inid place right here right how friendly was the vibe

172. 1:19:25

     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 kiding now 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 is not translating into

173. 1:19:50

     transactions what the are you talking about so we're Lily let me retake this real quick we're going to put Vibes on chain IRL in person get in here an and this is how we quantify Vibes so you're at the spot like and 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

174. 1:20:13

     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 on scale 1 to 10 all you 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 already to go home and close out density not that packed nonetheless I think it's pretty diverse in here's a wide range of

175. 1:20:36

     people and so again Vibe check and you can mint that on chain and now it show up on Boston the feed exactly so first first collector to put Vibes on chain now 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 NF so people are not getting rugged or quality verification of a person right because a lot of us when we meet someone they give us the representative like oh yeah hey

176. 1:21:09

     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 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

177. 1:21:35

     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 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

178. 1:21:58

     standard based identity framework from digital identifiers and verif verifiable credentials which then leads me into okay what are verifiable credentials these are basically it represents physical credentials 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

179. 1:22:24

     the nerdy explanation right in in general what we're doing is building a brand right we're figuring out the business model 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 we're 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

180. 1:22:48

     could fractionalize ownership for the ownership of that right and so there's a lot of things there that we're also 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 nerfy 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

181. 1:23:11

     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 I'm a nerd as well and so I say that very in a very positive way but I think at the end of the day when we are just ones and 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 as

182. 1:23:37

     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 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

183. 1:24:02

     share 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 transferable in real world examples real world examples are Spotify playlists as you can see rap caviar has over 14 million followers and 7 billion streams people curate these playlists put this music together and some of these songs you might not never heard before and

184. 1:24:26

     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 different things for people absolutely so this was early on in in 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

185. 1:24:51

     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 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

186. 1:25:14

     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 wanted to be a web three Yelp of sorts so you're able

187. 1:25:38

     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 in the chain

188. 1:26:02

     right this is our take on how to do that in a more cultural curated experience in a way exactly adding 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 three because we need to blah blah blah and take over the system but in the in

189. 1:26:25

     the larger capacity they're like okay show me how I can use it today right and as soon as you pull your out most of our things most of our toys don't work right you're like yeah all you got to do is and they're like uhhuh uhhuh uhhuh 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

190. 1:26:48

     simple and then we need to give them space to kind of go deeper put 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

191. 1:27:14

     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 used the thing now we have transactions now we have some things going on and that's part of our our Circle precisely and again experiences this is so vital I seen a tweet not too long ago it said web 3 currently in this market is an events company and I couldn't agree more right

192. 1:27:39

     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 con this year or last year and now a year later and you reconnect with them and it's all good it's allh that's how we met that's how we met two years ago at a nft NC and

193. 1:28:03

     was able to come together and now we've built a company and thrown 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 RI create revenue and create a sustainable and continuous in community right private mixers Retreats

194. 1:28:28

     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 scale up globally 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

195. 1:28:50

     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 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

196. 1:29:16

     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 creatives we realized that we didn't want to alienate anybody because we're we're talking the folks who are all

197. 1:29:38

     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 music it may be more of a hacker house

198. 1:30:01

     and the way you see that is on our app through the map 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 VIP situation yeah right where people are just like aunt said Vibes are

199. 1:30:25

     very subjective and understand that toggle and there's developers there's you know artists fashionistas fashionistas spiritual people regions regions whatever the case might be so ultimately how do we curate experiences for them and how do we still create an an inviting space for them because this is what we need in web3 it just can't be purely developers right that doesn't really work too well we need people from all different divers backgrounds build this thing all over and so if we really want to continuously grow continuously

200. 1:30:57

     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 change 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 thing you know getting in touch with the right folks who can help your specific idea get to a specific group let us sow

201. 1:31:22

     exactly we got about one minute and change if there are any questions we can totally talk a little more my front in the back yes oh yeah absolutely so shout to the sponsors shout out to the sponsors well they helped to get the event going for sure right and it's a great question um I think in the redeem section right as we partner with Brands let's say they have a new product that they want to put

202. 1:31:52

     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 hyperfocused 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 product or experience or Etc

203. 1:32:16

     that's one way but then the obvious Web Two web none ways of them putting up B 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 come from a rich family then funding it yourself is a little hard so these

204. 1:32:41

     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 question to ask so but yeah that's our time appreciate

205. 1:33:05

     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 marketing lead for some time uh definitely join the community if you can and creative D and all those are viby in the ecosystem all the viby individuals shouts to you peace peace all right well amazing day that we had here about an hour and a half with Boris starting with education and then

206. 1:33:41

     we had mlh talking about their Fellowship mint base and Louise and wrapping it up with Vibes got to love that that's it for this stage that's it for this room every everybody head over to gento and see what's being built in the hackathon we'll see you over there