Bankless - 86 - OpenSea & The Business of NFTs | Devin Finzer

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Devin Finzer, founder & CEO of OpenSea, returns to Bankless to discuss the NFT boom and the role of OpenSea at the center of it all. From Devin's perspective, the energy surrounding NFTs right now is crypto native. This means that this boom starts at the center of crypto culture and extends outwards from there. We also discuss scaling and gas fees, the spectrum of centralization, the metaverse, and the OpenSea's recent front-running scandal. Building with an open mind and conviction is a key reason why OpenSea finds itself at the center of the NFT markets today, and it looks like we may just be getting started. ✨EXCLUSIVE EPISODE DEBRIEF✨ https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/exclusive-debrief-opensea-and-the  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ 📣 ZERION | Your Gateway to the Metaverse! https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​  💧LIDO | DECENTRALIZED STAKING https://bankless.cc/Matcha  👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 Devin Finzer 6:05 The Crypto Native NFT Boom 9:15 Building With an Open Mind 11:36 OpenSea at the Center 18:06 Scaling Under Pressure 22:24 Gas Fees 25:01 Social Media & Users 32:00 Before OpenSea & The Bear 39:50 When NFTs Heated Up 41:45 The Front Running Scandal 48:21 The Centralization Spectrum 55:31 What’s the Metaverse? 58:24 Rapid Fire Questions 1:01:43 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Devin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dfinzer?s=20  OpenSea: https://opensea.io/  NFT Bull Market Episode: https://youtu.be/cmLJHlNlH1s  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front-run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. David, great episode today with, I guess maybe the unicorn of the year. That's Devin Finster. He's not the unicorn, of course, his company is. It's OpenC. What did we cover here? A little bit of everything going from the complete history of the genesis of OpenC to where we are today. Also talking about Devin's perception as to why NFTs blew up at all in 2020 and

2021. Why is society ready for them in today's age? What's the appropriate context? We also talk about the insider trading, which Devin corrected that term to be something else. We talked about that whole debacle. But you really use that as a jumping off point to talk about the nature of OpenC as a company rather than something like Uniswap or AVE or Com. compound, which is a decentralized app on Ethereum. Talked about that spectrum and also asked, is OpenC going to go the whole, like, committed centralized company route or going to go down the defy application route?

I asked him the question, what's more likely an IPO or a retroactive air drop? And so stay tuned for his non-answer there. And all in all, just had a fantastic time. Had a pretty punchy short conversation with Devin Finser, CEO of OpenC. Yeah, absolutely. We asked him a question, can NFTs really give you? get any bigger, are we at the peak? So stay tuned for the answer on that question, too. And I guess my takeaway from the conversation with Devin is, like, he's a really cool guy. Like, he's a humble

builder, right? So even when we asked about, like, how come OpenC is blowing away everybody else? And it really is from a marketplace perspective, absolutely dominating. He pivoted to, like, here's some things that we're not doing that great. You know, like, here's some improvement areas. And I guess that's kind of what it takes to build a company like OpenC in this environment. We also asked him near the end about his NFT collection. What does the CEO of a multi-billion dollar NFT company actually own in their portfolio? So stay tuned for the answer to that as well. Guys, we're excited to get into the conversation with Devin. But before we do, we need to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new

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Bankless Nation, we are super excited to introduce you to our next guest. He's had a tremendous year, a fantastic year. It's been a huge year for NFTs, but he caught the original NFT bug back in 2017 when the world didn't know what an NFT even was. He applied a Y Combinator at that time where he began working at OpenC. Devin Finzer is now the co-founder and CEO, of course, at OpenC. Devin, it's been, I think last time we talked to you, it was March before. for all of this craziness. How you doing now, man? Doing well. Thanks for having me back on. I've been a huge fan of the show, as you know, I've been listening to all the episodes. So it's been a great

way to keep track of all the goings-ons as someone who tends to be somewhat heads down in company-building mode. So going well, though. Well, welcome to the mutual admiration club because I buy all of my NFTs on OpenC. It's a fantastic platform. And it's absolutely blown up this year. We're going to talk a bit more about in what way open C is blown up. But first, we've got to talk about NFTs writ large. Last time in March, it was just like the very beginning of kind of an NFT craze, if you will, or maybe sort of it was ebbing down. But NFTs over the course of this year have absolutely exploded onto the scene.

And I know you've got a great vantage point on this because you live and breathe this stuff. But like, why did NFTs blow up this year? Why now? Well, as I always like to say, I think it was just like the accumulation of a lot of things over a long period of time. But I know that's not the exciting answer that people want to hear. But I do think, you know, if you zoom out, that what's really interesting is just like it's this whole kind of cultural movement around crypto that has really driven this wave, which is actually not what we expected, like, early on in our like journey at OpenC we thought maybe like sort of mainstream gamers would sort of like. like come on and like, you know, people would build these like crypto games and that would bring people from outside of crypto in. And, you know, there's definitely been some of that. But it seems to

be more driven by this like cultural movement from really like crypto native people who are now realizing that like there's all sorts of like interesting social and cultural interactions that they can have through NFTs like Cryptopunks and BoredAbiot Club and whatnot. So that seems to be, it just seems to be kind of the accumulation of a giant. movement and NFTs playing this critical, like, you know, cultural role inside of that movement. And, you know, certainly like just all of the building and all of the smootening out of the user experience is still obviously very rough, has just helped grease that flywheel, bring more people into crypto.

And I think it's just the accumulation of a lot of things at the end of the day. That's a super interesting observation that you just made. I want to dig into that for a second. So like you, I thought the interest in NFT, would come sort of externally, right? So, like, gaming was a huge thing. But you're saying a lot of this has been driven by sort of crypto, if you will, exporting its culture to mainstream and mainstream being like, oh, that's cool.

I'm getting one. I want in on crypto culture. You're saying it was sort of the reverse of what we all thought. Yeah, and I think, like, I mean, in fact, we probably should have known that, right? Because that's sort of how the internet worked, not that I was, like, part of there a little bit. but like I can't, I'm just sort of going off of like, you know, my personal experience and what other people tell me. But like, you know, my sense is it's kind of a similar phenomenon where like there are these people who were just like super early internet adopters and there was all this like cool stuff you could do on the internet. And it sort of like spread from that as opposed to like, you know, existing incumbent industry is like moving people over.

Right. It was more of this internet culture that emerged and then like, you know, people dip their toe and, like, you know, people dip their toe. once they dip their toe, they were kind of addicted to it. So I think it's a similar pattern where it actually turns out, like, most of this stuff tends to be grassroots at the end of the day, even though it's kind of hard to maybe imagine that early on. So way back when, Devin, when you were building OpenC at Y Combinator, and I thought it was an interesting fact to learn that when you actually applied to Y Combinator, it was

not to build OpenC, it was to build something else. And then you pivoted during your time at Y Combinator to build out OpenC, it kind of feels like a change of major for a Y Combinator. So when you were choosing to build out OpenC, what were you envisioning the future of the NFT market would look like? And then how closely did we actually get there or what surprised you along the way? Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, my style and like I think a healthy attitude sometimes can be to not have sort of too many like preconceived notions of what the future is going to look like and focus a little more on just like, what are you curious and excited about in the here and now? That was our mentality.

It was just like there's a lot of people building cool NFT stuff. Like there's definitely momentum. It's not clear exactly what's going to happen. We can sort of like prognosticate different ideas and like, you know, kind of make some forecasts. But generally speaking, it was more driven by like there's an exciting product we want to build and let's just go and kind of experiment. But I do. think we're still very excited about the future of like gaming NFTs as as a big use case. I mean, Axi has really proven that out. And I think the interesting thing is that if you look at the development cycle of games, they tend to be a bit longer than, you know, your typical, like, collectible or art project. So I think I'm still really bullish on like, you know,

game companies seeing what AXE and other companies have done and them like taking a few more iterations and really pushing things forward, but just taking a little bit longer, but being really big at the end of the day. I think gaming could just be huge because there's that utility and sort of native digital analog to kind of the existing gaming world. So, you know, I could still see that metaverse vision being driven by these these gaming projects in addition to kind of the collectibles and art. But really, you know, overall, I think it's just like more diversity of NFTs, all sorts of experiments in such a broad technology that at the end of day, I think it's going to be a lot of things. So, Devin, some people aren't sure about all of that, right?

So some people, maybe we'll call them the haters out there, they think that NFTs have peaked, right? Maybe we're witnessing the peak. I mean, OpenC is doing like billions a month in volume. How much bigger could the NFT market get, they ask? And they say, well, maybe it's a bubble. I'm going to ask you the same question. Like, do you think the NFNFEs? F-T market can actually get bigger than it is right now? Oh, certainly. Yeah. And I think, like, at some point, you kind of achieve, you know, a level of escape velocity. And I obviously think we have a, I mean, it's early days.

We have a long way to go. And so this isn't sort of a statement that should be taken as, like, pompousness or, like, feeling like we've already made it or something. But I do think we've made it sort of past the point where we have to sort of, like, try to, you know, correct the naysayers. It's like why I spend mental energy, like telling people why it's going to be big when you can just sort of like point to, you know, what has happened and say like, it's pretty clear. And if you don't see that, then that's fine. We don't have to justify ourselves anymore.

Yeah, exactly. You don't really need to justify yourself. Do you guys, like, the right click save tribe is like, it's, sorry guys, case closed. Yeah, we don't even have to talk about that anymore. It was like sort of an interesting jumping off point for maybe like an intellectual discussion. but like at this point, you know, it's been discussed and like, you know, we can kind of move on to like more interesting things, right? Well, let's talk about something that's super interesting. And that's open seeing, the numbers you guys are putting up there. So I mentioned billions in volume per month. We could get exact on that. 3.4 billion in gross merchandise volume in August. I think you're on track. September just finished out. So over 3 billion again in September. So it's not really decreasing very much at all. And just to give folks some context, right?

Well, you mentioned the internet, the original internet, right? So, like, you go back and you look at the Web 2 marketplace companies. This is more volume than most all of, almost all of, maybe, the very popular Web2 companies. It's more than Etsy, for example. I think you guys are creeping up towards eBay type numbers. Tell us about that. Like, how is it possible that OpenC has found itself at the center of this NFT mania and this NFT boom. Yeah, well, I think it's, I mean, I think it's just very interesting to see that, you know, there's this sort of mechanic where, like, you know, you can have a very interesting business and sort of level of, you know, sort of traditional marketplace traction on still a very early community with a very kind of early product. And I think it's just a testament to sort of how much room there is to grow, right?

We are really still serving the crypto community and the people who use OpenC for the most part are not like necessarily crossing over directly into NFTs. They're usually like having to go through a lot of the traditional like crypto hurdles. So I think it's it's pretty, you know, exciting that we're able to have, you know, volume numbers that look similar to more mainstream marketplaces in a brand new space. And it's just a testament to kind of how exciting crypto as a whole is going to be. And I do think that we're witnessing, I mean, we've been witnessing this over and over again, but each cycle or each sort of movement within crypto kind of becomes, it becomes clearer and clearer that this is like a giant trend, not sort of like a mini trend within, within tech, right? It's this, I think crypto is the big paradigm shift that, you know, a lot of people

have been looking for for a long time. Of course, OpenC isn't the only NFT marketplace that exists out there. There are plenty other marketplaces where you can browse NFTs and purchase NFTs. But OpenC is really the platform that seems to have captured the bulk of the energy when it comes to this NFT mania, NFT phenomenon, NFT hype. What about OpenC made it be the standout clear winner in the last few months of NFT market volume? What features and designs about the OpenC platform? really made it the winner that we all know.

Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is like we're really trying to improve our platform. Like we, you know, we were sort of in the right place at the right time. We had a great feature set. We have, you know, people on our team, we're always really listening to what customers want and trying to build the right features for users. So I think that's been really important. But I do think at the same time, you know, we've gotten some push from the community that we can do a lot better on a lot of different angles. And so I wanted to start by just saying that we're trying to improve.

And so I don't think, you know, I was hesitant to talk about what we're doing well because we have so much room to grow. But I do think, you know, the things that we did well, you know, we just sort of like continued to figure out, like, what was important to people when they were browsing and filtering and discovering NFTs, right? Like, you know, traits are really important for NFTs to being able to have a sidebar where you can, like, dig in and, like, eat. easily filter search performance of the site, which is something we're still working on,

is really important. So it's something we take really seriously different mechanics. So auction mechanics, bidding, bundles, private listings, all of these things, just like sort of the full suite of buying and selling. And then, you know, gradually making the user experience easier for people. So supporting all the different wallets, just being very kind of friendly with the ecosystem, as opposed to trying to build all of the things ourselves, has been important for any Web3 company.

I think it's really important to like figure out what your focus is and not kind of necessarily try to like take everyone else's territory, but be really, you know, friendly and, um, and play into the ecosystem. And we all know that communities are the lifeblood of almost everything in crypto, uh, companies, applications, tokens, doesn't matter. Your community is everything. And so having a company that listen to the community is really, really important. And so, Devin, I'm going to ask you kind of an,

unfair question. Is it intimidating to seemingly have like an entire NFT bull market on your shoulders? Well, I don't think, yeah, well, I think, you know, I definitely don't want to give the impression that like OpenC is like the one company, you know, moving this thing forward. It is interesting that like we have been such a dominant force in terms of like market share and all these things. And certainly, yeah, it's a big responsibility to the, like, to make sure that the product is as good as possible, like, fix these burning issues. And we really are trying as hard as we can to kind of, like, scale the team. We were like a very small team when this start happening, six or seven people. Now we're about 45 people. But like, wait, wait, wait, you guys were six or

seven people when? Like, is that this year? About a year ago, we're about six or seven people, yeah. six or seven people a year ago, now 45. And yeah, so a very small team that had to sustain this growth. Yeah, yeah. So we're really, yeah, I think for anyone who's like frustrated with our platform, you know, we are trying to improve it. And it's been really just like a challenge of how quickly can you scale, you know, not breaking all the kind of cultural things that make the company work well.

So yeah, we're really trying our best. and it is a big burden, or not a burden, but a big responsibility for sure. Totally. I want to peel back some of the layers there because you guys have gotten absolutely just flushed with users over the last few months or so, all in such a short amount of time, right? So what are these users telling you, both the new users, the old users, like what are the most commonly requested features? What are the most commonly like surface complaints? Like, what do the users demand in 2021 when it comes to OpenC and NFTs? Yeah, I think, you know, trust and safety is a big one we're investing in.

So ensuring that, like, when you find something on OpenC, it is, like, the sort of verified version of what you're looking for. And it's not, you know, anyone can create an NIFT now. So that means that you can create an NFT that resembles a legitimate one. So just figuring out how we deal with that problem in, like, more creative ways. Curating for quality and filtering out like scams and stuff like that. Exactly. So just doing a better job of, like,

manual curation, algorithmic curation, ensuring that the best content gets filtered to the top, right? That seems like a, almost like a Google type job. The thing that Google did for the web was like, just curate links for us, right? Help us search things. Yeah. That's kind of what you're talking about, right?

Yeah, no, exactly. I think there's a lot of like interesting analogs there. Here we're dealing with like sort of more structured data, whereas like web pages were just these giant like HTML things. So it's a little bit of a different problem. But yeah, it's certainly similar.

And then, you know, there's also the external challenges, right? Where, like, people are getting, you know, scammed or fished on Discord or whatnot. So dealing with those sorts of challenges. You know, now they're actually a really interesting one that's popping up that we're working on is, like, you know, now NFTs have almost become this, like, free messaging platform. Like, you have your OpenC account with, like, your stuff in it. And anyone can send an NFT to you without you needing to accept. the NFT. And so now people are sending, especially in Polygon, they send people, these,

maybe you guys have experienced it, they spam NFTs. And so giving users greater control over their profile and like what kind of bids they see, what kind of stuff they see there, like those sorts of challenges are another one that is a big user pain point. And then I think the one that's maybe not spoken about as much by the like more visiparous members of the cryptic community, but is a big pain. It's just people who are trying to get in. and have to go through, you know, get crypto somehow and then get it into MetaMask. And, you know, traditional, like, crypto onboarding challenges hit us pretty hard as well. Devin, do you find users complaining about gas fees?

Like, do gas fees? And that sort of trades it. Does that become your problem? Like, so I've been personally shocked at myself because, like, you guys know me on Bakelis, I do not like to spend ETH. That's the thing I do not like to do. And then I found myself on OpenC, and I'm like, I'm like spending. $100 or more, right?

Like to mince something, David's like, those are rookie numbers, but brother. I'm surprised that it's been surprising for me to see the amount of demand for NFTs and how NFT like purchasers

and users are willing to spend massive amounts of money to do things in this world. Yeah, I'm curious your thoughts on all of that, I guess, Is this a kind of a growing concern? Do you think it's a show of maybe of strength of NFTs? It's got product market fit.

People are willing to go to these lengths to mint them. What's your take here? Well, no, I mean, I think it's a very strong indicator of like product market fit. The fact that like people are paying hundreds of dollars, like I don't even list their first, you know, there's a set up process on OpenC where you have to pay gas fee. And like that often costs a lot of money. and just like people going through that demonstrates that there's so much

strong demand here. I do think like, you know, to your question of like, you know, having to use ETH, right? You can have like a process where you like restock up on ETH every time you can pig ass.

But oftentimes like, you know, you don't think, you don't necessarily think to do that. But yeah, I think like the barriers to entry are so high. The fact that people are like,

you know, doing it is just, such an indicator that there's so much potential. I mean, on Polygon, for example, like, that's sort of a testing ground. And some of these other layer ones and all these other things are, like, kind of testing grounds for what it looks like when users don't have to worry about that. For example, on Polygon, we pay gas fees, which is kind of nice. The challenge is that you do run into, like, the gas fee is almost this kind of, like,

interesting and inefficient spam reduction system, right? Yeah. I guess that's kind of what it's for, right? But it has like these sort of like, it does it in a really weird way, I guess. And you don't have that on some really polygon. So then you sort of have these different problems that come up when the application is paying the gas. So I think application developers and users are kind of trying to figure out like what's the best way to provide a good onboarding, but then also like have these like checks and balances in place.

I want to get your take on this because I think this is a big secular trend that we've just entered into. and this is like social media platforms and web two now starting to come to web three right so like we've seen glimmers of this with Reddit right they're doing tokenized stuff but now we're seeing it with NFTs and we're seeing in big way so uh you know the the newsletter platform that we use on bank lists is called substack right and we have been I've literally been begging them for the last two years to add ETH as a payment option right yeah pay by credit card we do something manual if they want to pay it by crypto they still haven't done done it yet, okay? But you know what we get as a release a couple weeks ago is like the ability

to embed NFTs from OpenC in substack, which is super cool. And like they're a smaller platform. They're not the only ones. Twitter now. The ability to authenticate NFTs as part of a Twitter profile. That's huge. TikTok now starting to experiment in the space. And what I've sort of seen Devin is like there seem to be almost three steps to this of Web 2 entering Web 3s. step one, they start experimenting. They're minting something. They got some content. That's what TikTok's doing now. That's what Twitter did a couple months ago. And then they get into the, we want to authenticate NFTs on our platform. That's where Twitter is. I expect that's where the TikToks of the world are going. Next, I expect they'll want to start like minting content

maybe directly from their platforms. But like, tell us about this trend. Is this a big deal for NFTs? And what does this mean for OpenC? Yeah, I think it's a huge deal. I mean, I think what's so cool about Web 3 and maybe what is sometimes overlooked is in the same way, you know, the Internet was sort of built on the fact that everyone had personal computers, right? That was like a sort of critical building block. Like Web 3 is, and then Web 3 is built on all of the kind of like information distribution infrastructure that was like built through Web 2, right? Like it's now nearly trivial to like contact anyone else in the world.

right through putter or whatever social media thing and and just spread information across the world and so um these when when you add the like this sort of new primitive on top of that those rails I think what we might see is just like way faster growth than maybe is expected and it's interesting because you know we have slow growth for a really long time and then if you look at our trajectory is like, boom, like unprecedented. And I could see that same sort of like unprecedented sort of defying the laws of physics level of like trajectory for crypto as a whole. I'm not just speaking of NFTs because we're not really dealing with hardware here. We do have some like technical constraints on like underlying blockchain systems.

But the rails have already been built to like get this distributed globally that I could see things sort of like moving really quickly, right? And it's scary, I think, actually, in some ways. But I think the, to do the question around like, you know, this web two, web three thing, I think that's going to be one of the sort of, I mean, it might fizzle at first. Like, you know, maybe some of these early experiments won't, you know, like get crazy traction and people kind of, you know, to be like, okay. But I think eventually that will be sort of what takes it to an even bigger level. Yeah, this could accelerate quickly. I'm like, I'm starting. to realize that over the last, you know, a couple of months. But like, how many, how many people

own NFTs right now? I've seen estimates where it's like, I don't know, 200,000 addresses, maybe 300,000. I think, like, I mean, I think, like, let's say, you know, it's, it's in that range. I don't know if it's over a million. Do you think, Devin? Or what do you think the range? Yeah, I don't want to give any exact numbers, but like, you know, I would guess more on the million. So we're in that ballpark, right? High hundreds of thousands, maybe, maybe a million, maybe a bit more. Right. But like how many daily active users or monthly active users does Reddit have, right? You know, 450 million, right? And like, what's the, I don't even know, how many accounts does Twitter have, right? Hundreds of millions yet again. And so web, web two kind of adding this NFT overlay is going to bring a tremendous amount of exposure to NFTs. And this thing could blow up really quickly. Like it could excel. We could be at the beginning of the NFT acceleration, even though it feels like to some like it's the top. So, yeah, I double down on that.

Like seeing Web2 platforms, they're, okay, Web2 is adopting NFTs in a way they've never adopted, like, cryptocurrencies and tokens. Yeah. Right? Never, not even close. Because I feel like they think they've already got the payment thing, like figured out. It's like, it's okay. Yeah, we accept credit cards. and that's good enough for a lot of people.

But this NFT thing, it's new. You can't do this outside of M3. I think it's a great point. Yeah, it's like incremental technology is not going to cause people to like change their roadmaps and like, you know, shift trajectory or shifts prioritization. But like brand new experiences that like are attracting, you know, millions of new users into these things.

And even though it's early, when you see that growth curve, you know, you can't really ignore it. So I think it's an interesting point. The AVE protocol is a decentralized liquidity protocol on Ethereum, which allows users to supply and borrow certain crypto assets. AVE version 2 has a ton of cool features that makes using the AVE protocol even more powerful. With AVE, you can leverage the full power of defy money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On AVE, there are a ton of assets that you can supply to the protocol in order to gain yield, and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have supplied collateral. Here, you can see me borrowing 200 USDC against my portfolio of a number of different defy tokens in ETH.

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preferred crypto asset. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH. So whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com slash go bankless. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after sign up, you'll be getting gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at gemini.com slash go bankless. Devin, I think people, including myself, would actually appreciate a little bit of a history lesson with OpenC and also you yourself. So before OpenC, before crypto, where did you come from? And then how did you, can you tell us the story of the genesis of OpenC?

Sure. Yeah, I have a very boring background. I was a software engineer. I had Pinterest and was on the growth teams. I like, you know, worked on consumer products. I left to start a company in the personal finance space that was acquired by credit karma, where I was an engineering manager for a while. That's around the time I got interested in crypto. I was like, yeah, just, you know, very, yeah, very boring. Like traditional fell down the crypto and robothole. Was interested in like the, you know, more consumer.

Like, you know, at that time there was sort of this like debate, which I think has in many ways been sort of put to rest, but like around, you know, blockchain being a financial technology or it being like, there's like tech crypto or finance crypto, right? Like is, is it all just about like digital gold

and like, um, these, these, these, monetary policy. Yeah, monetary policy. Or is it about like the new web three internet, right? And I think the jury is out and it's a web three. Um, but that was then that was still a debate and there were actually maybe fewer. I'm sure you guys were in the web three camp, but like there were, maybe 50-50 or something, right?

And CryptoKitties, I think, was like the first semblance of something that was like, oh, this is your first, like, kind of consumer Web3 app. We were, the other, yeah, the other thing was we had applied to YC with a different crypto idea and gotten in with that and sort of realized that that was more of like a, like a crypto idea that was like your traditional, like, ICO type. thing. What was that idea? We were going to do like, it's sort of like helium. It was going to be like Wi-Fi or bandwidth sharing using crypto.

So like you can basically share your Wi-Fi with other people and earn cryptocurrency and stuff like that. So not a lot of companies are doing that, but it's more, it's just like a different type of project than like a thing where you can just like take it to market and see how customers interact with it. So pivoted to something related, doing it. something related to CryptoKitties. I think at the time, what was really interesting was people were permissionlessly developing on top of CryptoKitties.

Some people were creating like Kitty hats or Kitty racing where you like did other things with your CryptoKitties, which was just a cool concept. And then, you know, the idea of a marketplace for CryptoKitties and things like CryptoKitties was like something that was a cool concept and sort of a bigger idea that, you know, you could sort of squint and think about how it could become a big, a big thing. So we just kept on kind of working on that and iterating on it. What kept you going during the bear market because it was deader than dead? Like, defy was dead.

And NFTs were never. Oh, my God. They were barely alive in the first place. They were like somewhere near the center of the earth. That's how buried they were. They were dead, dead, dead. It didn't even barely existed. Oh, I think it's honestly just like, you know,

not really having done a successful consumer startup, our metrics were really bad for sure. Like we didn't have that much users, but we had some and they kept on coming back. So like, you know, it was like enough. And, you know, they were very vocal. So like to us, it seemed like we had adoption like a bit. And like, and then also within the developer community there, that was where you saw the real momentum. Like just people were really excited about it. It's still building.

So it seemed dead from like out the outside, but internally, like within the small niche, it was actually pretty vibrant. So I wouldn't say like that it took like, I mean, yeah, certainly, you know, in hindsight, now if you look at our like graphs, like those user numbers are just like minuscule. But it wasn't like you were like really like being there were a few people like that kind of like, you know, beat us down to some extent. I'm like, you know, you guys should pivot out of this and do something else. But there was also a lot of like really positive signal. And so I wouldn't give us too much credit for like, you know, weathering the like bear market. Because I do think that there was a lot of kind of just sort of hidden excitement and energy in the NFT space. Like we had conferences and stuff still.

People were like meeting up and, you know, talking about their games and stuff. It was just, I guess it was just underground. Right? You're signing in those days with a few hundred users per day and that kind of growth and that some developers thought it was cool. And that was enough. I guess the other thing people don't realize is like it felt really terrible in 2018 in 2019.

But like it didn't last that long. Right? Like we're just talking about a couple of years. Can you please wait a couple of years until you reach unicorn status, definitely. I mean, we're not talking about, like, grueling decades of trying to weather this thing. Yeah. Granted, two point five years into the bear market, you still actually didn't know that the bear market was about to end.

So, like, putting ourselves back into those shoes. Like, we could have, like, in that frame of reference, like, we could have gone on another year or another two years. We actually didn't know at the time. Yeah. And, I mean, I think what's impressive, like, I haven't followed these, like, trajectories like, super closely. but like like i don't know roblox i think started like 2004 something ridiculous right where like

you know and they were just building this game where it was like there really wasn't i mean there was a bit a bit of a macro trend that they were capitalizing on but like they had no idea whether this game was going to actually like take off and they just kept on like that type of like passion and like ability like just devotion to building like this amazing product is very i just think i mean you know i'm not saying that what we didn't do, did wasn't admirable, but like I, I think there's like people who have weathered so much more and then eventually like kind of seen that inflection point when there was really no, there's never a guarantee that you're going to hit that inflection point. But as long as you love what you're building, then that kind of like keeps you going. So what was it like to be a fly

on the wall of open sea slack or open sea headquarters in 2020 when all of a sudden the NFC markets actually do heat up. And we're like, I'm reminded of that gift from the office where there's a Michael saying, everyone stay calm. It's happening. It's happening. Everyone stay calm. Like, what, when there actually was like a, like a actual moment where like in the winter of 2020, when NFTs really had their first big mania. Like, what was that like? Like, was there just like an internal office meeting? Like, guys, this is it. Or like, what was the like the realization point? Well, I think one really weird thing about that was like so that was February like well I guess like August

2020 was when thing started heating up and you know it was still like COVID right and so like there wasn't you know people were still very asynchronous right and so getting that like and we're also just a small team where like six people so it wasn't there wasn't much like you know everyone kind of knew what was happening and like you know it wasn't like we didn't like we're just like oh this is very interesting there was one day where like it was

like, you know, 10 or 20X, the volume that we usually see because of this hash mask project. And it was just like, and we didn't really think it was like the beginning of, of some crazy run. But yeah, I don't remember. It was just like very kind of interesting and confusing. And we're all just like, whoa, is this is this going to continue? There's always a question of like, is this going to continue or not, right? And then, you know, things would die down a little bit, but then they'd just get bigger and bigger. And then the recent one, I mean, this recent last month was just very, that was just like an overwhelming feeling because we, you know, we're doing these really crazy days of volume. And there it was like, let's just like hold on for dear life and just make sure that like everything's running correctly.

Nice. And so you guys have had, like you guys had your first taste of success in 2020 and then continuation on that success very strongly in 2021. But also recently we've had that story of a first like bump in the road when it comes to just. what it's like to being a company with this whole insider trading debacle. Can you take us kind of just through the story of what happened from your perception? And can you also answer the question how much ether the employee actually was able to collect from this informational arbitrage? Can you tell us that story and tell us the fallout? Sure. Yeah. And I think one important note is like this was not insider trading, right? Because you know, we don't trade financial items on OpenC. These are NFTs or digital. art. So there's no notion of insider trading. The term does not apply to us. But, um, so I think

that's an important note. But, um, yeah, and just, you know, to, um, talk about that particular incident, we, we did have an instance of an employee, um, who, um, made purchases prior to, um, items being listed in promotional slots on, um, the open C homepage. Um, and, uh, we, we did end up letting go of this employee. Um, we've had internal policies. around what the use of confidential information at OpenC and the knowledge that certain things will be promoted. But we really use this an opportunity to strengthen those policies and ensure that they were crystal clear, both for employees and also like crystal clear to people externally,

that, you know, employees are not allowed to use confidential information on the platform to make decisions around buying and selling NFTs. And so we view this as an opportunity. You know, this is completely uncharted territory because this is not an exchange. It's a marketplace for consumer items. And so we have taken this as an opportunity to really, like, pioneer some of those policies

and ensure that we're, like, really being forward thinking about it. And luckily, you know, in the grand scheme of things, this was a very small incentive. of a problem. And so really, like, you know, we saw this as, you know, a responsibility to the community to push the space to a place where, you know, people on OpenC have a level playing field and ensuring that those policies are super clear. In terms of the monetary amount, I think it was like 50 grand or something like that.

So, again, right, this is like really small, you know, not going to make it. huge difference in someone's like crypto, you know, financial state. And so, you know, it was an unfortunate event, but again, like something that was quite small, but, but was a useful opportunity for us to really solidify those policies. Yeah. Just throwing out some thoughts there, Devin, as you think about that. So like when I first heard about that incident and kind of investigated it. I guess I felt kind of a mixed reaction. Maybe I'm speaking for others in crypto there, right? The first reaction is like, oh, interesting. This is all on a public emphasis on public permissionless blockchain. So it's really cool that the community can see

exactly what's going on. Right. So we have a layer of transparency in open finance that like people would have never seen this or caught this in the existing system. So that's a plus. The other side of me was like, okay, crypto industry, we got to do better because if we don't figure this out, right, regulators are going to come to us and start asking questions. And, you know, deservedly so, right? Like, are there centralization vectors? Are you using those centralization vectors to screw over customers? I think that's a fair question that regulators can pose to any centralized service.

any so-called defy service in the space too. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. Like just what can crypto do more broadly or defy or the NFT space more broadly to self-police, to self-regulate, right? Like is there a way maybe an open sea can sort of say, hey, here's our employees, here's all of the addresses they'll use in the platform. We're using the openness and transparency of a public permissionless chain to actually, you know, provide more information. in the public. Give me your bigger picture thoughts here. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah, I think, you know, in an uncharted space that's like completely greenfield, I think that's the opportunity, right, is to really put in place those policies. I don't know if it comes in the form of like

everyone needs to know every address of every opency employee because, you know, there is privacy considerations there. But like, for sure, you know, ensuring that like, you know, we have clear internal policies that those policies are clear to our user. Also, I think there's really opportunities to bring in more sort of decentralized organizations to get involved in the curation process in some of these areas of the product. So, you know, working with DAOs on, you know, promoting content that are, that's, you know, maybe voted through a DAO or something like that. And, like, you know, just having more surface area of the product be given over to decentralized organizations in our community. I think it's really important. So we're really looking to see how we can better, like, engage our community in the curation of the content on OpenC and not make it as central, have as much of a central point of failure in just the, in the OpenC organization.

That said, we, of course, I think perhaps contrary to some crypto companies, we do believe that having, you know, an organization that can scale quickly, that can make decisions quickly and is not relying on kind of like a decentralized group of people to make every single. single product decision is really important if we're going to serve our customers well, listen to customer feedback and move quickly as a company. So there's a balance there. But I totally agree that, like, you know, this is an opportunity and this is what we're working on to put in place those policies. And hopefully other companies, since there's going, there are a lot of marketplaces. There will be more and more companies that, you know, participate in the NFT space

can look to and model and adapt policies as well. So where this conversation goes and kind of why I wanted to bring up this conversation in the first place is that it's illustrative of OpenC that OpenC's a company, not an app, right? It's not a decentralized exchange. It's not a DAP on Ethereum. It's a set of smart contracts on Ethereum that helped a company operate, but it's a centralized company, which, while it's a sign of maturity and growth, I think, of the Ethereum and Defy ecosystems that we are starting to have these centralized companies that are operating. by smart contracts. OpenC is not the only one. D-Y-D-X also comes to mind as well. But at the same time, like, there's a reason why we all like D-Fi. And so, like, where's your head at with OpenC and its future as it relates to, like, the centralization, decentralization spectrum? Yeah, it's a good question. And it's interesting. The terminology there is interesting because I would, I do think maybe some people would, like, label us as a DAP, and we do think of ourselves as a

decentralized marketplace in the sense that, you know, we're not custodying assets. We're allowing users to connect our wallets directly. And the transfers, it's up here to pure exchange where, you know, it never is in the hands of OpenC as like a custodian. So I did want to make that clear. Yeah, I think it's a balance, right? Like, I do think, you know, one of the reasons Uniswap was successful was not just because it was just like a completely decentralized protocol, but also because it was very

practical, right? Like, it made, like, the mechanisms made sense. It was very easy to swap. They made a nice portal for, like, you know, the first version of univap. And then, of course, they integrated in all these other platforms, but, like, there's a lot of pragmatism, actually, to their approach that I think people sometimes gets lost in the conversation where people are like, oh, it's all because these companies are extremely decentralized that they're successful. I think also a big piece of it is that they, the self-custody approach of connecting your wallet and immediately being able to swap is a better user experience. And so for us, like, it really comes down to like, what do we think is best for the user base,

you know, and we want to take into account the philosophical leanings of the user base and, like, you know, the ethos of the community. But at the same time, we also know that, you know, people don't always know exactly what they want. And sometimes people want, like, a. fully decentralized thing, but then when that happens and there's all this fraud and like you can't actually take down like listings that are just fake and like all of these things happen. And then they're like, oh wait. They want the decentralization without the

sharp edges, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then they're like, oh, wait, maybe I actually kind of wanted someone to help with these problems, right? And so, you know, there's all these problems that we're really, and you know, I think some of them we have to take a step back and say like, is it good to be a centralized point of failure for certain things? What can we, that's why I think incrementalism is really important, like giving some pieces away to the community, but not being so dogmatic about it that you, like, destroy yourself, right? And so I think just striking that balance is really important. So that's kind of how you do it. What do you think is more likely in the future, an open C IPO or an open C token air drop? we should start a prediction market for that on

polymarket or something. Get it in, sir. Who knows? We'll see. Going back to, I guess, the topic of decentralization versus centralization, I find myself agreeing. So personally, I'm a big believer in decentralization, the lower in the stack that you get, right? It becomes far more important.

It's far more important for Ethereum to be decentralized than every single component of an app on top of it. like an open sea. But I think others maybe disagree with that too, which is, and we've seen recently, there's been a talk of a vampire attack. This was a headline from Coin Desk. Andre Cronier has created an open-se like project. He is open sourcing it, I believe, putting it out on a side chain. And he's kind of like throwing down, I guess, right? Saying, hey, we're entering the ring. OpenC, what you got? And I'm curious what you think about that, Dev, and not about that specifically maybe, but

what are the moats that OpenC has and what's going to be important moving forward? Do you think, how do you feel about vampire attacks? You think they'll be effective. Yeah. Well, yeah, first I think you make a really good point, which is like Ethereum is like the perfect example of like where decentralization is so vital. And I think if you move up the stack, like you have, you do have these proof, points, you know, uniswap, compound, et cetera. But it's really, you know, the causality isn't as

clear always. Like, it's not clear, you know, to what extent did uniswap adding a token lead to its success versus just being a really great protocol, right? And, and so, you know, I think that's important to keep in mind as, like, as you, like, analyze these things. But I do think, yeah, I mean, to the question of these, like, vampire attacks and, you know, different approaches, is, I mean, in some ways, we kind of welcome the innovation. I think there's a lot of things that we do that maybe, you know, folks who are just starting new projects don't realize and only become problems when you hit, like, a certain level of scale.

I think fraud and kind of like curation and discovery being one of them. And so I think anything that sort of pushes the space forward and creates a better use experience and forces us to innovate is actually pretty healthy. We, you know, we take sort of the approach of like fearing. our customers, right? Because we want our customers to like love our platform and use us because we're the best user experience. But we, you know, in terms of our competitors, if we feared kind of our competitors all the time, then we'd usually be lagging far behind on a customer experience standpoint. But yeah, I think the last thing I would say is just like, I don't know exactly

all the mechanics behind that particular vampire attack. But I do think what we've seen in the past with tokens is they can be like a very interesting short. term way to kind of incentivize liquidity and move people over. But oftentimes what ends up happening over time is like people gravitate towards the product that works the best and in the experience that has like, you know, the optimal thing that users want to accomplish. So I think there are a lot of interesting tactics. And for sure it's, you know, we don't take these attacks like lightly by any means, but we don't necessarily think that there's, you know, that we, you know, for example, have to, like, immediately introduce a token because

someone out, some other project has one, right? I think there's more sort of, like, thoughtful ways we can approach it. Devin, everyone thinks that we are on the cusp of the metaverse yet no one is really kind of figured out what the metaverse actually is yet. We have our ideas, but I want to pick your brain on what the coming metaverse looks like. How do NFTs fit into into that story? And also, what's OpenC's role in the Metaverse that's coming, whatever that is? Yeah. Well, I feel like I think you guys have, I mean, you wrote a, one of you wrote like a blog post on it, right? Which I think was more like thoughtful than, you know, anything I would say.

But like in terms of, yeah, I think it's like going to be sort of, I mean, in some ways it's like already kind of here, right? It's like, you know, we have like, if you think of the Metaverse is like these really awesome, like immersive experiences, we have some. of that in virtual reality today, right? Where, like, there's so many cool things you can do at VR and social and all these things. And then you have crypto where you're, like, you know, able to interact with people across the world and these interest in exchange value and interesting ways. So you kind of have the ingredients and maybe, I guess maybe the interesting thing about is like, will there be these like worlds where it's like sort of combining all of the kind of frontier technologies of today,

like virtual reality, artificial intelligence. crypto. They're all kind of like innovating a little bit separately, right? Like VR isn't touching crypto a ton. AI starting to touch crypto a little bit, but like they're all kind of separate. And so, you know, maybe those three frontier technologies, maybe there's another one with biotech or something, like start to converge and you kind of get like really interesting stuff. Not to like call out a particular project, but one, Alethea is this really interesting, weird project that's like, it's like you they put like gpt three on nfts and like they come alive and like start talking it's just like so many different frontier technologies all in one product um so i think like that kind

of thing is some is like an interesting way to think about the metaverse is just like the combination of frontier technologies um in terms of open c's role yeah i mean i think we yeah we're really trying to be sort of you know the best marketplace for the metaverse and then also like help push forward the open standards that allow the Metaverse to work really well, right? So like the metadata standards for NFTs, interoperability between NFCs, and that's something that we're just getting started at, because most of it has been like playing defense and like just making the marketplace work well. But that's like one of our, the exciting pieces of our vision is helping with the standards that like make this all possible. So that's something that I think we'll be investing a lot over the next

like year or so. That's awesome. Devin. And I know we had to kind of accelerate our time. together. So I want to wrap up with a few like rapid fire questions if that sounds okay with you. Sure. Okay. So the first I have is this, like tremendous amount of growth in the last year. What now OpenC is a unicorn company, right? So, you know, you're riding the unicorn, sir, over a billion, at least in value. What advice would the unicorn Devon, the Devon of you now, tell the old Devon a year ago, the Devon with a, you know, seven person team, what insights would you have for that person? Well, I told it two years ago, Devin, to, like, hire more people and, like, scale up

a little faster because I think we're just running way too lean. And I maybe tell the seven person, but we were, you know, at that point, we were trying to do that. It just took a little bit of time. Yeah, I think, like, you know, and again, you know, these are maybe the, like, much older or much younger, Devin. But, like, yeah, following your conviction, I think is really important, like, sort of not like, not over indexing on, like, advice from really.

far people, if it's not properly contextualized, I think is important. Tell us about your favorite NFTs, Devin. What are your favorite NFT projects? I'm a big fan of like virtual world, sort of early metaversey type things like DeCcentraland and Cryptovoxels. Cryptovoxels is really one of my favorite projects where like, you know, it started out with one guy who just sort of started selling virtual land on OpenCe. And now there's like this whole community of people who are creating interesting art projects inside of Cryptoixels. It's just like, You know, it's just, you can really, like, dig your teeth into it and go and, like, do stuff in

crypto-oxels, whereas I, you know, necessarily get as much of that from some of the more, like, collectible projects. And I think it's just, it's one of those projects that's been building for so long. Decentraland and sandbox, similar. But, like, I like that grassroots style of just, like, you know, Ben, the founder is just so passionate about it and it's just been working so hard that I really find that admirable. What do you think the cutest NFT project is out there? And, Why is it the penguins? Whoa, you read my mind. I actually think it is.

I would say the pudgy penguins. Anyway, you're talking about pudgy penguins, right? Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cute little guys. Wait, are there other penguins? Are there other penguins guys?

I mean, I'm sure there's something, but yeah, those are the main one. There's always other things. There's always the off brand. I got to ask them. I think you only need... I think you only need... You mean cool cats? No, no, no, just crypto kitties.

Okay, Crypto kitties? I mean, yeah. Do you own any like flashy big NFTs? Do you do you have anything too crazy? No. Why? Have you just like just focused on building? Yeah.

Have you purposely stayed with it? Every time I thought about like going and buying an NFT, I was like, maybe I should just go back to work. See, David? That's my pain, man. Too busy to keep up with all this stuff. That's why I always say punk and done. Punk and done.

go. That's what you always say. You always say that? Well, I do now. Okay. It's punk and done. Devin, this has been an absolute blast. We appreciate it so much.

Anything you can tease for us in the product roadmap? Anything really cool coming? All the open to see users. Well, I think because our launch of our mobile app wasn't like, you know, super flashy since it's sort of a first iteration of it where, as people like to say on Twitter, you can open and see your NFTs, but not necessarily do anything else about yet. But the mobile app is really, we're iterating on it. It's getting, you know, we have some cool releases, just like incremental improvements to it.

It's really fun. Just a cool way to like, you know, open up and check like what's going on in the NFT marketplace. So I highly recommend people trying that. And yeah, we'll probably, we'll have, you know, new projects coming soon. So that's live now on mobile, Android and Apple? Yeah, Apple Android, yeah. Sweet. Yeah.

All right, guys. Devin, thanks so much for joining us and talking more about NFTs. I can't imagine where you will be a year from now, but we'll have to have you on soon. We shall see. Thanks so much for having me. Action items for you, bankless listeners, number one is go check out OpenC, if you already haven't. This is the premier marketplace for NFTs. We'll include a link of the show note in case you need it. Also, go download that app that Devin was talking about where you can explore NFTs on your mobile device. We also have some previous NFT episodes for you.

The Bull case for NFTs, there's an episode with Andy 8052 as well on YouTube. We'll include a list to our popular NFT episodes in the show notes. Of course, guys, risks and disclaimers, ETH is risky, DFI is risky because it's this episode. I feel like I have to tell you. NFTs are risky as well. They could go up, they could go down, even if they're cryptopunks, David. But we are headed west. This is the frontier.

It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.