Bankless - Behind Axie Infinity's Engine | Jiho (Layer Zero)

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Jeff ‘Jiho’ Zerlin—or jiho.eth on Twitter—was an early Axie Infinity community member before becoming the project’s Co-Founder. Ever since he could remember, Jiho was a gamer, collector, and entrepreneur. Jiho wouldn’t be the engine to Axie’s growth today without his formative childhood. This is what shaped him to become the community leader of the leading play-to-earn game in the world, Axie Infinity. Now—Jiho and the Axie Nation are taking things to the next level. Jiho shares the stories from his early formative years that shaped him to be the engine of Axie’s growth today, how community building changes in bull and bear markets, and what Axie’s secret ingredient is to the project’s lasting staying power. ------ 📣 ZERION | Trade Across 7 Networks and 500+ protocols https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | SMART ORDER ROUTING https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🚀 SLINGSHOT | LAYER 2 SOCIAL TRADING https://bankless.cc/Slingshot  🏦 GEMINI | TURN FIAT INTO CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/Gemini  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:52 Jiho’s Formative Years 15:47 Jiho’s Evolution at Axie 23:44 Axie’s Staying Power 34:50 Community Building in Different Markets 39:50 Organizing Axie Nation 44:50 Investing in P2E 50:44 Axie’s Emotional Bond 58:00 Optimizing for the Metaverse 1:05:46 What Jiho is Optimistic About ------ Resources: Jiho on Twitter https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie  Axie Infinity https://axieinfinity.com/  ----- 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 

Some people might get the community rights and some people might get the economy right. And some people might get the scaling right. Some people might get the art and the gameplay right. But I think putting it all together is great where the magic happens. Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell.

The cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And layer zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today, we are speaking with Gio from AXI Infinity. And AXI Infinity might be one of the first organizations that knowingly is calling them a nation, and really, really fits that model. And I really think the AXI Nation is the right way to understand what AXI is trying to do. And so that makes Gio, one of the first core community leaders of the AXI Nation,

A very, has a very interesting vantage point as to how to view communities, communities growing around Web3. I think as we all know, like all things in Web3 all have communities around them. Everything that tends to work tends to also have its own community. And so we discuss how the AXE community has grown, the ways that it has shaped over the years during, in its various sizes as AXE has progressed to its development. We talk a ton about what the Metaverse is, what it means, why people like it and how it will be shaped in the future. And also just some other fun facts and tidbits about Gio, which I don't think you would get anywhere else. So let's go and start talking to Gio right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

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Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, of course. Where are you in the world right now? I am in Puerto Rico. Oh, yeah? Do you live there? I don't think, you don't live there, do you? I'm staying here for a bit. I got stuck here after Metaverso and, you know, just have a lot of work. So they don't want to stop traveling. Well, Puerto Rico's not a bad place to get stuck at. So that must be if I, there's a lot of crypto people down there. Anybody from AXIE?

Yeah, there are some AXI community members down here for sure. We play basketball, go to the gym together. Well, I'm sure you have AXE friends all over the world. So no matter where you get stuck at, you can probably find some members of the Axy nation wherever you live. Yeah, that's one of the best parts of the community. So where'd you grow up? Let's go back to your, let's go back to just like your formative years. Where did you grow up in the world? So I grew up, I was born in New York and I grew up there for the most part.

Yeah. Grew up gaming. Yeah, so I grew up as a gamer as a collector. My dad is, my dad is an interesting guy. He's like, he's a polymath man. So he has like so many different interests. So he owned a gallery as a painter. He collects insects and fossils.

So he's really into like moths and butterflies. He's actually an attorney as kind of as for his profession. So he's kind of like doing a lot of different stuff. My mom is Korean. She's like a typical tiger mom. She was super strict. So I was always right like trying to play games. She was always trying to get me not to play games.

My cousins are Korean. I'm half Korean. So Gio is actually my name. My Korean name. And my cousins would bring over like StarCraft, Diablo, World Warcraft. That's kind of how I got into gaming a bit. Whatever game I played, my entire school ended up playing for some reason. I was like the curator.

And yeah, so I got really into gaming as a kid. I was an only child, so I think like I was, you know, just keeping myself occupied and trying, you know, kind of right in the early days, right, like StarCraft, that was the first thing I ever did on the internet. And you could actually kind of socialize from your bedroom as a kid. Yeah, my mom sent me to boarding school because I was way too into wow. Vanilla Wow. And that's basically why I left New York, went to New Hampshire. These are all Blizzard games. Is that a coincidence or what's up with that?

Those are, I think, a lot of the games that really defined me, I think happened to be Blizzard games. I was also really into Donkey Kong country, like during the Super Nintendo days. Zelda, like, Okina of Time. I think I played through maybe 20-20 plus times. obviously a Pokemon. I still have my Pokemon collection from when I was a kid. I was an early adopter. I didn't know at the time, right? But I have a bunch of like first editions and shadowless that I was just collecting as a kid because I wanted them. Like I would sell sharks' teeth and my drawings and stuff like that to scrounge up enough. And yeah, apparently my collection's worth

quite a bit now, which is crazy because like that was all, yeah, you know, just collected by me as a kid without too much capital. And was it to play the actual Pokemon guard game, or was it more about the collection? It was more about the flex, I think, and just, I have this collector's instinct, right, where I just, there's some things that I just need, right? And I think it's similar to my dad. I think I'm, I think it's genetic. I think I inherited it from my father, right?

Where my dad has cases on cases of butterflies. I think he has, like, around 40,000 insects. Wow. Wow. So I think I just have that collector's gene. And so, you know, I played the, I played Pokemon on Game Boy, but in terms of the card game, you know, I was an only child. So I didn't have anyone to play against me. So I would just collect them. You know, that was always, yeah, like that was, right, those were in the days of kind of, right, it's like, if you wanted to play with other people, they had to, like, kind of come over to your house or whatever. So people would come over to hang out. But most of the time I was just by myself. Like, I was one of the kids that bought two Game Boys so I could trade with myself. my red and blue version so I could get the 150 right you couldn't get one of the genius aspects of Pokemon was you needed right like you couldn't get all 150 um in classic right in the classic versions

unless you actually right like somehow traded with someone who had the other version of the game I guess like the yeah the loophole was that you could just be both people did you ever complete your polketex I think yeah I think I had 150 yeah which was your starter was your starter Pokemon? I pick Charmander. I like reptiles. Like I grew up having lizards and

salamanders are not ripped up with like amphibians. But yeah, like I always had frogs, salamanders, reptiles, snakes, turtles. So you pick the, yeah, right, got to pick the fire reptile.

You said that you were like like the trendsetter for your, for your school's games, I want to unpack that a little bit. How'd that happen? Like, what, was it a coincidence or was it just you had the energy about the games that you liked and that ended up being enough? What was there? Yeah, it's, it's strange where, right?

Like, yeah, I would, you know, I want, I just wanted people to play with me. Or, like, with Diablo, like, I would get people. And, right, I was like, you know, I wanted people to trade with on amicable terms or to, you know, kind of farm for me. I would gear them up and, you know, say, hey, get me, you know, send me some stuff later, you know, once you're up and running. Um, so yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I think I was just really into it. And my, I think also was like my, my, uh, my cousins were really they're Korean. They were like really kind of ahead of the curve. They would get like the new Blizzard game as soon as it came out. So for some reason, I was always the one, uh, who would get

this stuff first. Um, and also, right, it was like also, I think my, my birthday was right around like where like you know games would launch so I would always you know get whatever for my birthday and try to spread it to the rest of school so I had people to play with yeah a winter birthday yeah I'm a February early February yeah okay uh that's pretty that's pretty cool because like actually we'll go in go into that later uh what was it um perhaps I mean you're kind of a charismatic dude. So when you come to, come to school with your games that you want to talk about, were you like a school socialite? Like, did you like to, you just, like to share stuff with other people and just happen to be games? Or like, what was your role with your friends in school?

It varied over time, but I think, like, if you ask my, it's hard for me to, you know, comment on that, but if you ask my mom, my mom will say that, you know, everyone for some reason, all the boys or whatever, like, wanted, you know, to be my friend for some reason. They would try to, like, impress me by playing games. I don't know. I don't know what it was about, but. Do you see any of that still being true in your time at Axy now? I don't know.

Like, I mean, I think great, like, you have an entire continent wanting to play with you at the moment. Yeah, thinking back, right, it's like, it should have been obvious that I think I could be a good, you know, a person to evangelize a game, to spread a game. It's, you know, it's come more into focus as things have progressed. So, yeah, it's, it's been a crazy journey. And, you know, I never, I never would have dreamed that I would be, you know, involved in gaming as a profession. I didn't know what I want to do with my life for most of my life, right? So it's only within the last four years or so that I've really, yeah,

felt like I've found my calling. Did you ever have like an entrepreneurial spirit as a kid or is that also relatively no? I think I was. So I was, you know, selling sharks teeth. I sold candy in my lunchroom. Shark's teeth, like we're talking about actual sharks teeth. Yeah, fossil sharks' teeth. Like fossil sharks' teeth, like 10 million.

Because my dad, we would collect fossils on the weekend. And he would, you know, he would let me take, you know, the ones that weren't perfect and sell them to the kids. So, yeah, I was all, you know, I was kind of artistic as a kid, too. I was, you know, selling my drawings. I would sell my drawings and paintings to anyone that came into my house, like my mom's friends, my tutor, people who came over to my dad's, who came over to look at my dad's collection. So, you know, I think, like, I have, I think I'm a people pleaser. So I think, like, right, like, also giving people what they want and, right, having, like,

some kind of beneficial two-way transaction, I think makes me, makes me happy. So it wasn't out of, like, a, like, a drive to save up for something that you wanted to purchase. It was more about, like, the transaction itself. I think, really, like, there's a social element of it. But then obviously, yeah, like, you know, I always was saving. up for something. My shadowless charters art, I saved up, you know, a while to be able to buy it. I think I paid 15 bucks or maybe 15 to 25 bucks. I think they're worth like 15K now. Oh my God.

So I saved up for a while for that. I would create my mom would and I would, we would, I would actually create my own reward structures as well where it was like, oh, if I do something good, I'll get a marble. And then if I get 10 marbles, my mom would give. me like $10 or buy me a toy or something like that. So I was interested in that kind of stuff. But yeah, I don't know. I would say I was a relatively entrepreneurial kid. I think that there are more entrepreneurial kids out there.

But yeah, I had a little bit of that in me. That sounds a little bit of an incentive gamification that you impose upon yourself by your mom. Is that what sound about right? Yeah, I would create the incentive structures that my mom would use to keep me behaved, yeah. And then, of course, naturally, this just lends itself into game, like, game economics design later, right? Like, is that, is that a direct one-to-one comparison, or am I reaching for something here? Yeah, I think there's some, I think there's some parallel there. Yeah.

Why do you feel like you've enjoyed that so much? Like, most kids don't want to impose rules upon themselves. I think it was, like, I wanted something, and I wanted, yeah, I wanted, like, a clear path towards getting it. So, yeah, it was kind of like negotiation strategy, I think, with my mom as well. Yeah. Let's see. Do you think, like, do you like the sense of, did you like the sense of achievement? Was that about it?

Like, you know, victory unlocked? Kind of, yeah. Yeah, I think I do like transparent reward systems, I think. I tend to think about that a lot with, right, Axy, you know, not just within the game. You know, the game economy, I have, like, you know, I would say, you know, relatively small role with, but also, you know, the creators and the, in the community and how everyone, everyone kind of aligns incentives with each other for sure. I find that, I find it fascinating, right? I think that's actually, right, like my understanding of Web3, because I come, you know, I'm not,

I don't come from a technical background. Um, right, I come from a gaming background, the collector's background, right? So, uh, for me, right, like the, well, the huge unlock that I see with Web3 is, you know, figuring out how to align incentives. and create these kind of sustainable economic engines to these open source technologies. So that's like a lot of, you know, how I'm looking at the space right now. So for the onlooker, the people that aren't like diving into Axi Infinity every single day and kind of just like knows that it exists and that it's extremely vibrant, your role in Axi kind of just looks like this great community manager,

like this great community leader who's just like part of just like injecting, vibes and energy into the community. Would you, A, do you agree with that take? And then B, if you, for somebody that would like to actually peer deeper into the scenes, what do you actually do? Sure. So I think that's fair. So I actually come from the community, which some people might not realize or remember in

many cases. So, like I discovered AXI just like a lot of people just like much earlier, right, where I was one of the first, I don't know, a couple hundred people in the Discord. It was very small. There were around, you know, maybe five to ten people there to kind of welcome me and walk me through. And, you know, I was super excited about it because, right, like, I was, I was an early Crypto Kitty community member, right? And there was always this notion like, hey, like, we need to be able to do more with these things. So it's not just about breeding and selling them, right?

Like, there has to be some emotional value. There has to be something fun that we can do. So it's not just us dumping cats on each other, right? So we kind of, you know, there was a little bit of that already that the space kind of understood. And, you know, so I, you know, I fell in love with the art and the fact that there was, you know, this roadmap towards a playable game that seemed achievable, you know, that really resonated with me. So I just started, you know, I just came in and started doing all the things that I thought I could help with, right? So, like, you know, helped write the original white paper. I started doing a lot of the announcements and, you know, community building, right?

where in the early days it was doing unscailable things, like getting to know everyone in the community, sharing the vision repeatedly so people understand, like, you know, what we're building and why. So, yeah, I think, like, a lot of that is still applicable today where, you know, I do a lot of stuff around the community and the economy. I think it's very interlinked, right? Because, right, ultimately, what's, what creates the sustainable economic engine

is, right, that people are spending, right, for fun or for status within the ecosystem, right? That's what's kind of subsidizing, right? The economy and this ability for people to actually earn. Was it as simple as just understanding AXI to be CryptoKitties but with a game or was there extra, you know, magic sauce that compelled you in addition to that? Yeah, I think that was part of it, right? Like we were just iterating, right? Like we, you know, I think a lot of it was, some people saw Axy as a fork of CryptoKitties, right? Like the marketplace contract is very similar. The breeding. contract is very similar.

And right, a lot of the early community members, right? Like, you know, kind of gave up on CryptoKitties and came over to, came over to Axi. So, right, there was a little bit of that, yeah, a lot of the people who got it immediately were like, hey, like we, there was three weeks where we could breed crypto kitties and actually make money, right? Like, how could this, you know, potentially last forever? So I think a lot of the people who were thinking through that framework were actually able to understand Axi. Yeah. And then, uh, was it? Was it in equal parts of like the fun of the game and or with the token tokenomics, the breeding?

Or was it, were you actually thinking like, oh, this is actually a really fun game? I am excited to play this. Or was it more about just like, oh, there's this fun, like, weird breeding economic system behind it. Like was it both or was one really compelling? I think it was a combination, right? Like, yeah, the idea that, right, like, you would actually need to spend time in game to earn the right to breed. I think that was like, right, like one thing that just locked into place and and seemed to make sense, right? where you could basically, right, like, the problem with Cryptocides was there's just hyperinflation

because people could just like, you know, keep breeding at will. Whereas, right, the idea that, okay, if you actually sunk human time, effort and skill, and to earn the right to be able to breathe, right, this would, you know, act as a, as a way to basically, right, back each axi with real human time and effort. So I think that was a lot of it, right? And then, you know, people were, part of it was just the community. Like, people were willing to help. People understood that this was a community-driven.

thing. They were really helpful. They were making awesome memes. They were making awesome, you know, we had some initial early video content creators and stuff like that. So there's awesome art. So yeah, I think it's, you know, it was a combination, right, of the community and, and right, the art and what promised to, you know, what was looking like it would be a pretty fun game. So I want to unpack, there's so many things I want to unpack. I want to unpack first off, the community aspect of it because isn't also, even though it's actually, is the, actually, like, it's more than a community because this, A, the size of it is so incredibly large. It's like, you guys correctly in my mind call it the Axy Nation, especially because you have

your own economy. But isn't the community at the very basic level also in competition with each other, right? Like, isn't it, isn't AXE kind of like a race for resources? And so, like, yes, it's very, like, collaborative and the Discord is very, like, community-oriented, but also, isn't it competitive, too? There is a lot of, right, right, at its base level, too, right? like the right there's

Axi is a right like in terms of the current product is a card battle game where you battle these pets together in PVP battles there's a leaderboard right but I think there's there's also right this collaborative spirit

which I think is interesting right like how do you turn like what's you know right now a PVP experience in terms of the gameplay and why is it so collaborative right because there is right this base ownership right where everyone owns Axis right a lot of people own access tokens right

So, yeah, it's, right, there's a little bit of competition. I would say friendly competition as well, which creates some camaraderie and bonding. But also, right, there's this PVE component. The PVE component is like everyone in the Axi community against the world who doesn't take us seriously, who thinks that NFT games are never going to work, right? We've always had that kind of underdog chip on our shoulder. And I think it's really important that we maintain that even as we get larger. Did you just use PVE where the E is not just the game that you're making, but the whole entire universe?

Is that what you just did? I think DGEN Spartan once talked about that, right? Like life in terms of like PVE and PVE. So, yeah. It's an interesting, like, tool to rally a community behind because, like, there's no better, like, enemies that exist to rally a community than, like, the faceless ones, right? And especially the gargantuan faceless ones. like, oh, yeah, like, we're going to take on everything. Can you just unpack that a little bit more about the significance?

Is that, like, an idea that you have, or is that more like a codified part of the Axy culture about how, like, oh, yeah, we're going to take on the world? Or is that just kind of the vibe that you get after you read between the lines? I think it's maybe half, right? Like, we saw in the early days, right, that the community was kind of rallying against. Always, right, had some kind of something or someone to rally against, right? In the early days, we kind of have like this beef with the Crypto Kitty community where they thought, oh, like, this is just a Crypto Kitty clone, right? They're never going to do anything.

Right. So, yeah, there's always been, I think, right, like, and from the early days we saw that that was like, you know, a good strategy. And I think it's also true that, right, like people, because Axi is so cute, I think they don't take it seriously. And it's like, I think it's just been us proving, right, the doubters and the haters wrong, like, month after month over the, over this journey. And I think, right, that's like part, yeah, it's part of the fun, I think. And so, yeah, I think it's part of our culture. And I think it's also something that, you know, the community leaders, not just myself, right? Community leaders understand is an effective strategy for getting everyone on the same page.

I want to keep going down this thread, but there's a question I have that I think if I don't ask it now, I might lose it. And that is a lot of the games that I play, like Diablo, both two and three included, borderlands comes to mine. A lot of these games end up all in the same state, which is like grinding. And me personally, that's kind of when I like tap out of the game. I was like, okay, I will go through level zero through like 99. But once I'm at 99, like I'm out. Like I'm done with the game. Like I don't want to grind the same things over and over and over again.

Have you guys thought about this at Axi and how have you like kept people engaged post grind? Like once you get to the grinding stage, how do you keep people entertained? Yeah, I mean, I think obviously, right, like the fact that you have ownership of the things that you're grinding for, I think, you know, helps, right, where you can potentially, right, convert it into something that's helping you in real life. I think that all games with staying power have, right, like, basically had interesting social elements to the ecosystem where, right, with Wow, wow guilds, right? There are people who play Wow, not because they find Wow enjoying, but because all their friends that they've met on the, line are playing wow. So it's like if they quit wow, they're going to lose all their friends. So the social, the social systems are really important. And yeah, I think like, right, with AXE, right, it's like people, they just want, they love being part of the community.

They love learning about Web3. There's always something fun to look forward to, right? Like we're constantly iterating and building new experiences on top of the axes, right? Like we're the current product is actually our second battle, second version of the battle system. We're coming out with the third version of the battle system. So everyone was like, right, like, we have this like when V3 meme, stuff like that. Right. And then, it's just like we're building out in public.

So people feel like they're building together, that they're collaborating together, that everyone, you know, that there are these connections. And it's just far more than a game, right? It's a place to have fun to bond with each other, to flex your crypto and of extravagance. So it has a lot. It actually is rewarding, right? So people always ought to come to the,

this topic, right? It's like, is Axi fun, right? And I've actually, we would talk to you, and I've listened to someone like the thinking from the founder of Yvonline. And right, and he talks about his like, right, like, people talk about fun, but actually what games should ultimately strive to be is to be rewarding in the same way that we find our lives rewarding. Right. So if you talk to any random person, right, they might, they probably, right, like, they might not find their life fun all the time on a day-to-bade basis, right? That might not actually even be good, be good, right? Fun is probably a poor thing to optimize for, right? But ultimately, most people find their lives worth living and rewarding through different, you know, through different forms of kind of, I guess,

value, if that makes sense. There's, right, there's social, there's economic, right? There's building a legacy, right? And I think the thing about AXI is that it's actually, right, like, harnessing this kind of, like idea of Iki guy, right? Where you're, people feel like they're part of this movement. They're building something that's substantive and important. And yeah, they're having fun and making friends while doing it. There's a line that I remember Joe Rogan saying once upon a time where he was recounting

the story of this person that he met that had this like kind of basic like production behind the scenes job at some like live music venue. I don't know. It was irrelevant. But, and just like kind of this normal guy, but he was like in some like insane top 10 tier world of Warcraft player. And like the line that this individual left with Joe Rogan was that I am such a nobody in the real world. But in World of Warcraft, I'm like one of the biggest celebrities. And like Joe Rogan was harping on the fact that the guy was talking about how he's nothing in the real world.

And like the contrast that he was giving was like, oh yeah, he gave up, he gave up his. real world identity in form of this fake world of Warcraft identity and he just deposited all of his mental energy and mental motivation into this fake world this world this World of Warcraft world. But I think when you kind of take a context of what you just stated where it's like no world of Warcraft's not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be rewarding. And then also we talk

about integrating assets into things like Ethereum where there's USDC on Ethereum which is connected to the Federal Reserve, and how can that be fake? Right? And so, like, you know, the game, the assets that you find in your game are just one steps away from being the reserve currency of the world. How can that be fake at all? And so, like, the takeaway that I just got out from what you just said is that,

you know, with games not supposed to be fun, they're supposed to be rewarding. Like, we're actually trying to recreate the real world, but in the digital world, right? We're not trying to make, we're not trying to make the digital world fun. You're trying to make the digital world real. I think that's also a functioning definition of the Metaverse, right? Totally. Right, this idea that our digital identities, our digital items, our digital experiences and lives are starting to merge and, right, like, become just as important and just this

substantive and rewarding as our lives in the physical world. Yeah, I think there's a hopefully transition happening where, like, games are no longer just like supposed to just serve you like dopamine on a platter, but they're supposed to, to serve you emotions of all types. Like responsibility. Like the things that you would find out in the real world. Like loss. I think there's a big component of Eve online, which is loss,

where like you go and you build your ships and then like you get like hijacked by pirates and you lose all of your stuff. Like that's a real emotion that you're going to feel as a result of that. And it's not fun at all, but it's very, very real. Yeah. You know, the more, the sustainable game economies, right, are going to mimic parts of life that we don't like in interesting ways. And that's also right, it's like as someone who works on games, right,

that's something to think about is like, right? Like how close to, you know, everyday physical life do you want these games to be? And is there, is there, right, is there some hybrid that is like a nice, I think, middle zone that might be, you know, preferable. So, yeah, it's, I think that's where a lot of the design space. is. There's another line that I hear also on Joe Rogan but this one came from Elon Musk where

he was talking about why Instagram did better, has got bigger than Twitter and Elon Musk said it's limbic resonance as in Instagram resonates with people's like more reptilian brain much better than Twitter does. Twitter makes you think. It makes you like actually use your brain. Instagram doesn't. You just vibe

in Instagram makes you feel emotions. And so maybe the version of the metaverse that delivers reality rather than just dopamine is the one that humans gravitate for because we're striving for that same kind of feeling right we're striving for that you know responsibility all the things that make us human and so maybe it's the successful games of the world are the ones that don't just deliver dopamine on a platter but are the ones that allow people to like use their deeper parts of their brain yeah especially the ones right the ones where it's where people feel okay

I think spending 12 hours a day. And it can't just be, right, all pleasure. Speaking of Joe Rogan, we were, Joe Rogan, Axie was actually mentioned on Joe Rogan last week. Like, he was looking into it, you know, looking at the website, he had it up. So we were trying to get in touch with him. But that was like, that was an amazing moment for the community.

Yeah, I think Joe Rogan is like on the cusp of just like going down a lot of the web three rabbit holes. but and everyone wants to talk to Joe Rogan obviously. But it's just, I think it's just going to take one of us to break open the doors. So if it's you guys, congratulations, if that's coming your way, that'd be pretty cool.

It's interesting because I think the, the flow of the conversation was, hey, like, you know, what do you think about meta and what, you know, Facebook,

formerly Facebook is now doing. And then, right, somehow, right, it's like, right, like rather than showing anything that meta was doing, they actually showed Axi Infinity.

So, yeah, if we can be, be, right, if we can be the poster child of, you know, this new digital revolution that's happening. I think, yeah, I think that's going to be awesome for, for us, for, for, for, for, Ethereum, for, yeah, for everyone. So how did you go from like one of the, just the early members inside the Discord to an actual team member? I just, you know, I showed up and I saw all these, all this work that needed to be done. And I started doing it, you know, in the early days,

I didn't get paid. We didn't even have, we didn't have money. We didn't have Eith. So, you know, I was getting paid in axes initially. I ended up, you know, working out really well. Like, you know, some of those axes are super rare right now. So, yeah, you know, just started figuring out, you know, what needed to be done. So a lot of the initial team members, they're Vietnamese, right? Masmune, who's like our artistic genius, Chung, who's like our CEO, he's an engineer. They're Vietnamese.

So, right, there's, you know, there's a little bit of a language barrier, right? So I thought, hey, like, I could come in and, you know, do some communication. try to build excitement and understanding of how big this could be within the community. When you saw the potential behind Axi Infinity, did you, in what potential did that forum come in?

It's like, oh, there could be a lot of people playing this game or like, oh, these axes could be really, really valuable. Like, which one was the one driving you? Yeah, I think it's a combination. Like, I think also like your, the limbic system thing also like resonates because it's like, hey, like these are cute. Like, people are going to like this.

This has the chance to really change gaming. We understood that there are problems with gaming in those early days. I know because, right, we wrote the white paper in about February or March of 2018, and we talked about some of the problems in gaming, right? Basically, right, in traditional gaming right now, majority of the value is not going to the people that are creating a majority of the value, right? The app stores, the game publishers are taking like north of 50%. So it's not even the game, the money isn't even going to the game developers, right?

A lot of it is going to these middlemen. So that's why, right, like, crypto is just like, right, like, so textbook definition, right? This is not advanced stuff. It's like, wherever there are huge extract of middlemen, right, you remove that middleman. you give it to the builders and the community members. So, right, this is AXI is just that principle, I think, applied to a game. And, I mean, so much of people,

so many of people must have come into the AXI ecosystem, more or less with that mindset or something similar to it, as opposed to, like, oh, this is going to make me rich mindset. Because, like, while AXE definitely started off the conversation of, like, oh, crypto gaming is, like, a financial opportunity. It didn't start there. Like, so have you noticed since the mooning, of the AXS token, a difference in the people that come into the AXNation, I'm assuming you have.

This is something that I talk to Peter Pan about a lot, right? Is community building in a bull market and community building in a bear market, fundamentally different problems. Sometimes require fundamentally different people. But yeah, it's something that we think about a lot, right? It's like, right, you get this, right, like, bear markets, you'll have a small number of missionaries. And then, right, the entire world finds out about you in a bull market and maybe, right, the cycle repeats. And, right, you end up with more missionaries than you did at the end of the last cycle or the beginning of the new cycle. So, yeah, it's like nature, right? It's like nature's healing. But, yeah, definitely as, right, our audience becomes more mainstream, you start to run into, you know, different types of problems, right? Like, you know, gamers are not super nice as a Democrat. pick. So you start to have, like, your community starts to become closer to like a League of Legends

community in some cases or some of them start to become like that. But I also think that a lot of them are, you know, are able to learn and understand, right, that this is a movement and a lot of them are receptive to the education. And that's also why it's important, right? Like, I think a lot of the projects that are trying to copy us, they don't have this like older, right, these veterans who are going to come in and, you know, basically tell the new kids what's up and what this project is really about. Yeah. Is there like a schism between the OGs and the new members? Yeah, I would say some of the, some of the OGs are a little bit reclusive and hesitant to, you know, engage with the, with the newcomers. There are others that are there, like, you know, that are, you know, more public

facing and, you know, think that and prioritize really educating the new faces. But yeah, like, just just like within any society, right? It's kind of like, oh, like, you know, people come in and, you know, there can be like class. It's like, right? It's almost like class. Generations, yeah. Rivalry, right?

Or, and generational rivalry, yeah. How have you guys, have you guys had to deal with that or is that something that has been like, it's maybe just a small friction? Or is it actually something that you guys have had to address intentionally? Just the differences between the generations. Yeah, I think, like, I think empowering people to build bonds. I think like the content creators, like the OG content creators too, right? Like they, they do a good job because, right?

They also, like, they see them as their followers and stuff like that. So it's something that I think is a difficult, it's a difficult kind of phenomenon that's happening. But it's also, it's a luxury in many cases because a lot of projects, they don't have any of that, right? They just have maybe, I don't know, a very small community. and many of them might just be super new and only focused on the token go up. I would imagine there's some like dynamic, like tribe dynamic where you have the village elders

and then you have like the punk kids and the kids want something that the village elders don't. Maybe the village elders know best, but you can't only listen to the village elders because like you got to also include the punk kids, right? It's politics, it's politics, right? Like it's now like I feel like I'm a politician, right? like I'm a have right like we have constituents right and I think that's what this is yeah it's we're starting to see the rise of these kind of opt-in nations right where it's not like right like the management is still right like mostly top down but right like it's opt-in right so I think that's also that's what we're starting to see more so than like fully decentralized co-management structures is right like you get to choose who you're

who your leaders are, which I think, right, is like that right to choose, I think is a key distinction. Yeah, well, and I think we'll also start to see, right, like, right, like more, more decentralized contribution, creation, building. And also maybe, you know, potentially kind of like decision making for the, for the future, for the, you know, the future direction of projects. But I think there's a lot of research and experimentation that's been going on and going into that kind of stuff. and I think like the optimal, I think the optimal strategy is also, right, I think Vitalik talks about this, right? It's like there are different communities

that want different levels of, right, different tradeoffs, if that makes sense. Like the AXI discord is like the largest discord in the world if I'm getting my numbers right. And I would imagine managing that is just an absolute nightmare. And if you call this thing a nation, and you're calling what you're doing politics,

how are all these different factions organized? Like are there, is it a, representative democracy or do you have like you know the content creators over here and then you have like the players over here but then you have like the casual players over here and the advanced players over here and then you have like the actual builders like how is this how does this nation organized yes so our discord is interesting right because our discord is actually an interesting example of how we've attempted at least to tackle this in the short term where we actually have a collab land into integration so you basically right to collab land will read your wallet

see what NFTs you have in your Ronan wallet and then assign you a role, right? So if you have three axes, you at least get to speak in the general chat. If you have 10 axes, you might be able to speak in the economy chat, right? If you're a landowner, you get to speak in the landholder chat, right? So, yeah, it's kind of right. We have these, you know, parallel forums for discourse. And then there are people who float among them. And yeah, we have community, you know, moderators and,

volunteers that kind of, you know, guard dog the Discord, right? Where you're trying to make sure that people aren't, like, misleading people, people aren't trying to scam the new players and things like that. So it's fascinating. I've spent a lot of my life in AXI Discord. And, yeah, I mean, Discord as a product, changed my life. I think I actually, yeah, so I'm, I am still, I think, the number one, like, by messages in the AXI Discord with, I think, like, you know, a couple hundred

thousands. My God, wow. That's insane. You talked about guard dogs in the discord, make sure that people aren't scamming people. If we're using a nation metaphor that feels like the police. Yeah, it's more like vigilante justice, I would say, maybe a little bit. Neighborhood crime watch. We're trying to like, we're trying to figure out, like, I think there's a question that we think about a lot in conjunction with the rest of the entire ecosystem. It's like, right, like, what is the level, what is the correct level of like community, right? like the community driving some some initiative and norms within within the ecosystem and you know what needs to be kind of like more of more of a firm you know something closer to a rule or a law right

right yeah that's that's nuts um i can't imagine how how much of how tall of an order that is do you ever fear that like what happens if discord goes down like discord has gone down at times like what would what would the axi nation do if discord like died for a week yeah so i I will point out a data point. Our monthly 30-day volume topped out at the same week that we hit the Discord max. Right? So it's like we solved, right? Like we were able to build this, you know, EVM scaling solution to scale our game to millions of players.

And then what's the thing that might be holding us back right now is like the 800,000 cap on a Discord community? Right? Because I feel like being a part of the community is such a fundamental part of the experience. that right like you're probably you know you're not getting as engaged community members if you're having a lower activation hard activation rate in terms like i don't know growth marketing terms right without having people actually able to join that main discord so i'll i'll say that it's interesting and yeah like we're definitely overexposed and overly reliant on discord i think it you know like there are some web three you know alternatives that are starting to maybe pop up but

it's still so early, but I do think that that is, right, that is the next wave of innovation, I think, right, around like basically social coordination tooling, right? So we're starting to see, you know, I don't know, these token gated forums started starting to pop up. So which might be like an early iteration of that. They're not quite as real time as Discord. Discord, right? Like, the server stuff is like, you know, it's going to be hard to get something to that, to that level quickly. And right, there's a reason, I guess, right, that, And maybe Discord is inherently unscalable, right? Like, why won't they let us get hit a million in our Discord?

Right. It's, that must be a very, very, very, it must take like a lot of like server power, right? To keep that thing going. Totally. Yeah. It's like if the breaking of Discord while you guys are doing the all time high in volumes on Ronan is like, well, we actually got Web 3 to scale more than Web 2. Like web two broke. That's right.

That's the paradox. Yeah. That was a paradox. I felt like, yeah, that was interesting. I think it shows, right, that we're facing a lot of the, we're facing a lot of the problems that these NFT games are going to face in a year, two years. We're facing them first, and we're going to, yeah, we're going to have to solve them first for them, for everyone else.

So as the AXS price just went absolute bonkers, one of the resulting downstream impacts of that is like so much. Angel investment seed investment seed round startups came as a result of that like once you it kind of felt like you know when Bitcoin went from zero dollars to a thousand dollars All of a sudden the sudden that happened was that we had like 10,000 Bitcoin forks now we're kind of seeing the same thing like a XS went from like a three million dollar market cap which is basically nothing to where it is now in the multi billions And now after as a result of this we have like an infinity number of play to earn games being like invested in right now like are you if you had to guess what percentage of those will have any sort of like meaningful adoption like five percent yeah probably like very small number yeah around like two to two to five percent sounds sounds directionally correct I think we'll might have to see a lot of consolidation

and this also goes for the guilds right we also saw an explosion of funding grounds for guilds for the games uh so yeah we might need to see consolidation around that and yeah it's it's going to be hard for all of them to succeed. But yeah, I think like we will also may see, right, some of some important projects come out, come out of this class, right? I think that's, you know, generally how crypto works, right? Where even, right, Ethereum was, you know, I think funded, you know, by Bitcoin, right? Like, that's how you paid in the ICO, I think.

So, yeah, it's, you know, it can be overwhelming sometimes, right? And it seems like, yeah, everything got comped against us. And I think, like, people don't understand. People are like, hey, like, yeah, if you just make a game with better graphics, like, it should be, it should have a higher market cap, right? But they don't understand, like, the work that's gone into this in terms of the community building as well and the thinking around, you know, the economy and nourishing, kind of, yeah, nourishing these content creators and everything, the relationships, social capital and this network. But, yeah, I think, you know, we also are, you know, extremely bullish on, and, you know, you know, these, player-owned digital nations, right? That's, you know, this part of the vision for Ronan is to be this scalable place for

some of the next generation of these experiences. So of those like 2.5 to 5% of these Play-to-earned game startups, say we're on the other side of this and like that 5% exists and we see which ones they are, what do you think will be the thing that they needed to have gotten right in order to make it through that filter? I think it's a combination. It's honestly a combination of things, which I think is what is going to make it so hard. Because some people might get the community rights and some people might get the economy right.

And some people might get the scaling right. Some people might get the art and the gameplay right. But I think putting it all together is where the magic happens. I think, yeah, Web3 community building. I mean, maybe I'm biased. Everyone tends to think what they do is important. So I think Web3 community building is, is, is a difficult journey that requires blood, sweat, and tears, and there are no shortcuts.

I think the art, it has to be, like, the right type of gamer, I think. Like, one of the underappreciated reasons for AXE success is that people love their axes. People, right, they feel bad selling their first team of AXIs, their first axes. The Gemini Exchange has been my exchange of choice ever since I got into crypto. I used Gemini to both buy the dips and also manage my regular automatic monthly purchases of my preferred crypto asset. On Gemini, you'll find over 50 different cryptos, including many of the top defy-and-Metheas tokens like YFI and Axi Infinity. Using Gemini Earn, you can earn yield on your various cryptos, including 8% on the GUSD stablecoin. Gemini is available in all 50 states and more

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You were talking about how everyone has this, like, emotional bond to their first team of Axis. and it makes it difficult to sell these axes or emotionally difficult is what you were inferring to. And it kind of reminds me of a conversation I was having with a DC investor where NFTs, when like crypto prices go down significantly. NFTs don't, they don't really, they're not the first thing that people go to like liquidate when they need to cover their margin positions, which many people in Defi have. Do you have your own experiences about your emotional attachments to axes that you might be able to share? Sure.

So, yeah, there are a bunch of axes that I consider priceless that I would never sell, right? Like my first axi number 707, right? That was what kind of introduced me to the universe and started my journey, right? Like, I bought that thing. I thought it was awesome. And, right, just started. I felt like, okay, I'm part of this project now and I have to start working. So yeah, I think, right, like that emotional utility, right?

I'm not sure if that's a term, but I think it makes sense, right? It's like, there's this emotional utility where, right, like, NFTs don't work if everyone is buying NFTs to try to make money, right? Like, it's just the laws of the universe don't work like that, right? There has to be, right? There has to be this notion that, right, you're kind of spending money. there are people who are spending money on NFTs rather than just everyone can cannot be an investor right um just like yeah i think we talked about this right like like when you buy a Pokemon card right right i you you buy a Pokemon card because you just need it right like the fact that you there is liquidity for it right like can

allow you to justify spending you know a large amount um so i think that's a lot of where the future is and right like what people what people need to understand i think this is also something that we don't do a necessary a good job of communicating as a space to the public right the public sees this you know they see us as uh right these degenerates that are right online right like make and all the headlines about are about people making millions of dollars or whatever and uh we have to do a better job of communicating, right, the emotional utility, the emotional aspect, the pride and joy of showing off these NFTs. I think that's super important in the education process and, you know, expanding the community and getting more people involved. Has this at all turned into a more like

concrete strategy with the future of the AXE ecosystem? Like you guys are trying to inject emotion into the game? Yeah. I think that. things like, right, like collectors badges, right? Like, so there was an interesting, there was an interesting change that we made where by accident, right, like when axes were fighting in battle, they stopped making facial expressions, like, stopped grimacing or when they're attacking or getting attacked. And that was like a big issue for our players, right? So we realized that, right, like these small little details that make axes more

lifelike. They're really important. So I think axes, right, like, for example, if you log in and you haven't logged in for two weeks, right, your axes should be, right, like, acting like a dog or a puppy when you get home after a long break, right? So I watched the documentary, like, why do we love dogs? Why do humans love dogs? It's not actually because we think that they're cute, right? Because there are actually a lot of people who have dogs that are kind of objectively ugly and they still love them. as much as, right, dogs that are actually, right, objectively cute. Right. And a lot of the reason that people love dogs is because dogs actually love humans.

Dogs show love and affection to humans. They reciprocate it. And that's actually what makes us love our dogs the most, right? So basically, in order for people to love their axes even more, we have to basically create systems where the axes actually can show a fact that. to their owners. So that was a conversation that I had with, with, like, the art team and the animation team, and they seemed really receptive to it. As a developer, that sounds like a really fun project.

Hey, make these NFTs, these animated NFTs, make them show love towards the people that own them. And, like, we could go, like, we talked about how, like, you talked about how the NFT industry doesn't really do a very, a good job of advertising the emotional bond that people have to their, to their, like, you know, NFTs. And the external world just kind of thinks that there's these pixels with price tags. But also, if we really want to optimize for that price tag, we would probably be trying to create NFTs that are more, like, stronger conduits of love between owner and NFT.

Like, this probably would be good for the valuations of these things. I think so, right? Like, ultimately, yeah, there has to be, right, like a combination of aesthetics, utility, and scarcity, right? And that's where, I think that's where, I wrote this about this in, I think, like, 2018, right? It's like the triple threat framework for adding value to NFTs. And yeah, like, you know, we, I think people kind of understand the scarcity part. They kind of, you know, they understand the aesthetics. And I think gaming, right, in general is an answer, an attempt to answer, right? Like, what does what does true utility for these? things look like. So that's, you're, that can be, that can be seen as, okay, like, you're using these things in a game, but I think it's also, right, like, you see these as part of your life. So, yeah, it's, it's really important. So there are actually, the people, the virtual beings industry has started reaching out to me a lot over the last year, right? Because I think what they see is, okay, when people think about AI or intelligent, yeah, basically like, intelligent characters, right? A lot of people, they think about, okay, like, how do we get a hologram or, right,

like a virtual influencer that, right, like, that seems lifelike. But I think, right, even lower-hanging fruit is how can you make a virtual pet that is more lifelike? Because the barrier, right, the, there is no, like, Turing test, right? Like, with a pet, right? It's like, it's a lot easier, I think, to simulate that the experience of a real pet than it is to simulate the experience of speaking and interacting with a real human being, I think. So I think the virtual being space or the virtual life space is actually really, really interested in AXE. So there's definitely some stuff to explore around that as well.

Earlier in the conversation we were talking about how good games, especially good Web3 games, have migrated from just like trying to serve dopamine mean on a platter to its players to creating much more realism. And we talked a little bit about loss, right? Like when you lose in a game, like you should actually have lost something either monetary value or something scarce because, you know, there is no joy without loss, right?

There is no such thing as one-sided happiness. You have to have sadness to also have happiness. And you also talked about how like, you know, the working definition for the metaverse is something that is just, the digital world, but just trying to replicate, replicate our actual world, but in virtual format. And so, like, my mind is going towards, like, the version of the Metaverse where, like, I think the way to onboard people into the Metaverse is, like, find ways to optimize for love, right? Because that's, at the end of the day, that's all what people want.

Like, you know, we all, like, some people get trapped in the money game, but really people forget that, you know, money is just, you know, means to an end. And usually everyone's end is the same thing, which is love. And so maybe that's the alpha for any of the web three game developers here is like, yeah, you're actually trying to build love into your game. I think, yeah, it's right, like these real emotions, right? It's like, I don't know, what are the hierarchy of needs? What is like ikigai, right?

I think like some people, they say that AXI is interesting because, yeah, it operates, right, at the intersection of what I want to spend my time doing, what I enjoy doing, or what I feel super passionate about. So yeah, I think replicating these, right? Like we talked about, right, the people, people, they say, oh, like, NFT games, they're not fun enough, right? And fun is some kind of like arbitrary ideal. But actually, right, you know, the founder of Yvon Online, right, he says, like, don't optimize

or don't, you know, chase fun as a developer, right? It's like you actually want to, you know, create professions within your ecosystem, right? Like you want to create a rewarding experience. And I think, right, like, yeah, I think right. Like what we're seeing is that our digital lives are becoming rewarding in the same ways that our physical lives are hard. They're difficult. But we ultimately, most of us find them rewarding in some way or another. Do you think that software, there's that meme that software is eating the world, right?

And now with Ethereum and smart contracts, software is also eating finance for like the first. time ever. And there's generally been the pattern that anything that software touches, it generally improves. And so now we have this concept of like the metaverse where software is just straight up eating reality and outputting like a different one that perhaps is improved. Like we could, it could get real dystopian, but it could also get real like utopian as well. Like do you, do you agree with the trajectory that like software is, producing a new version of reality that perhaps is better because that's how we can code for that. We can code it to be better.

I wouldn't, yeah, it's hard to say better. But what I'll say is, right, I think it's creating this base level of access to ideas, relationships, and communities, right? where for most of human history, we were forced almost, right, to basically be a part of the town, the community that we're kind of physically born into, even the nation state. Whereas what we're now seeing are these opt-in nations, opt-in digital nations, often digital communities that are starting to fulfill a lot of the needs and desires of what it means to be a human being.

And, right, like, if you're born into a, right, if you're born into a very difficult situation, I think it provides some opportunity out where, right, you can meet people from anywhere around the world, learn from them, right? You're not just, like, you know, being limited to the people and ideas and circumstances of where you're, you know, physically born into. So that's, that's one, one thing that I'm starting to see, right? And I think it's interesting that, right, the first scalable impact that we've started to see is, right, like, you know, people going crazy over Axy and places like Venezuela and the Philippines, right, where there is, you know, very low access to, right?

Like, yeah, opportunity ideas, things like that. Well, I think that's a really optimistic version of the future. Obviously, there is the tug of war behind, like, well, you can't actually go live in the Metaverse. Like, you know, the Metaverse will not put food on the table. Only real resources in the real world definitely will. But it's also hard not to be just extremely optimistic of, it's just easier to discover things that you care about on an emotional level because of exactly what you talked about.

Like, the Internet allows you to go take a B-line for the things that you. you care about where if you were born in some, you know, small town population of just like 1,000 people in some like flyover state or some, you know, third world country where like your hobbies that you have can't really be fully expressed. Maybe the Metaverse allows a more direct route to expressing some of those interests. And I think, right, like one key point that I think just popped up into my head is it allows you access to people in a direct access almost to people in a different socioeconomic class than you. Right.

So you could be a, right, Filipino Axy player, and you can join a guild, and you could meet, right, like, you know, really enlightened web three, you know, people from all over the world that have been in the space for six years and kind of learn from them. And when, right, like, when very rich people spend within these, right, digital economies, there's more, it's more of a, it's a, it's a, more of a perfect trickle-down system, right, for example, right? So if, you know, someone, if someone is rich and, you know, just wants a bunch of axes, they're buying axes from the

marketplace, that there is, right, like direct value transfer from someone in a developing world spending for fun and to increase their collection to people in emerging markets that are, right, seeing this as a way of ascending in, yeah, in the universe or they're kind of like their socioeconomic status. So I think there's more. more, right? Like, this one of been, this one been one of the, I think, like, the super controversial things, right, about, I don't know, the last 40 to 50 years of, you know, a global macro policy, right? It's like, right, like, how efficient is this idea of, like, right, trickle-down economics. And I think we haven't really seen, right, truly efficient mechanisms of having those types of trickle-down mechanics actually work, right? Where, you know, arguably when rich people spend in the physical world, a lot of that spending goes to other. they're rich people. Whereas I think in when rich people spend in the digital world, there will be more of that value captured by, yeah, you know, I guess people from people who are, you know, I guess

who don't have that much capital. Jeeho, what about the future makes you optimistic? I think that the future is going to be scary. I think the future is going to be actually be more free and there's actually going to be more responsibility in that. I think like we're, we're starting to see the technologies that will allow us to be, right, more autonomous. But there will also be, right, like, a battle. And, and I think for me, like, what I find, like, I always felt like I want, I was a revolutionary without, you know, any cause to be involved with. So I think, like, great, like, if you're, if you're that type of person, right, like, I think our generation has reason to be optimistic because I think we are a lucky generation. And that

that there will be significant causes to take part in, which is, right? Like, some people might feel jealous of people who lived during, I don't know, I don't know, like very peaceful eras. I think we're not going to have a peaceful era. I think it's going to be full of conflict and schisms and different ideas, but I think those are the most interesting times to live in. And I think our generation and the people who are involved in this ascension of Web3

where we have a chance to be, yeah, looked back on for generations to come. So we actually, it's almost like a generational opportunity that will come with a lot of, yeah, it's going to be hard. But I think, like, at least we have a cause worth fighting for, which I think some generations didn't have the chance to, like maybe like the baby boomers or something like that. I think being adaptable in the 2020s is going to be a very, very important, property or characteristic for, you know, making it through this crazy decade,

because I also think it's going to be one of volatility and chaos. Any other characteristics come to mind as to what would be useful properties or characteristics, personality traits for people to lean into as they navigate in the next decade? Yeah, so I think like, yeah, open-mindedness, curiosity, yeah, just being open to making friends with anyone anywhere in the world and forming, like, deep, social and kind of economic relationships with with people over the internet right i think um yeah i think like and then just like being willing to i don't know waste a lot of time online right trying to click the right combination of buttons to go down these interesting rabbit holes and i think

this is you know so i i think like the yeah the willingness to kind of wander and right like some people, I don't know, are so goal-oriented, but I think sometimes you just need to kind of absorb information. So I think having that willingness is also going to be really important. Gio, thank you for joining me on this episode of Layer Zero. Thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun.