Bankless - Zora Announces The "Zora Network"

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Today’s guest is Jacob from Zora who is here to announce the Zora Network! A layer 2 solution that allows creators of any kind the ability to mint their ideas in a much more scalable way. Tune in as Jacob walks us through everything new and improved with Zora. ------ 🚀 Unlock $3,000+ in Perks with Bankless Citizenship 🚀 https://bankless.cc/GetThePerks  ------ 📣 CYFRIN | Smart Contract Audits & Solidity Course https://bankless.cc/cyfrin  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2   🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask   ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum   🧠 AMBIRE | SMART CONTRACT WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ambire  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap  🎮IMMUTABLE | GAMING ECOSYSTEM https://bankless.cc/Immutable   🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  ----- Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 2:22 Episode Overview 7:26 Jacob's Take On The Internet 11:52 A Network Of Walled Gardens 14:10 Defining Zora 17:41 The Frontier Of Digital Expression 22:28 A Platform Without Constraints 26:16 Announcing The Zora Network! 34:54 What's Next For Zora? 40:13 Creating An L2 Schelling Point 42:23 Does The Zora Chain Host Data? 46:13 Wen Token? 49:04 On-Chain vs On Chain 50:45 The Future Is Weird 54:12 A Marketplace Without Constraint 56:07 Expand Ethereum/Outro ----- Resources: Zora Twitter https://twitter.com/ourzora  Jacob Twitter: https://twitter.com/js_horne   ----- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Bankless Nation, we got an exciting new episode for you today. It's not every day that a brand new network comes into the Ethereum fold. The Zora Network, Zora, is getting its own layer two built on the OP stack. And today we have Jacob from Zora to guide us through that conversation. Jacob is a very deep thinker about so many of the things that hold up this ecosystem, the idea of on-chain communities, digital brands, minting ideas. And so not only do we unpack all of this news about the Zora network, the new Zora layer two, but we also just unpack deeply what is Zora?

Because Zora is, it's an NFT mincing platform. There are many of these around. But Zora really stands out differently from the others out there. And so these are some of the conversations that we get into. But first, more specifically, a layer two, primarily focus on media and art. What does that unlock? Who is that for? How does this set Zora apart from other NFT mincing platforms?

what is the Zora network good for? And then of course, how and when does the inevitable Zora token fit in here? And of course, at the end, some bonus goody conversations, the conversation around on hyphen chain or on chain, which one is right and why does it matter? And also, Zora frequently uses the line, expand Ethereum. What does that mean? So all these conversations are going to be unpacked in this episode with Jacob from Zora.

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that you need to get into the world of smart contract security and D5 protocol development. So there is a link in the show notes to get started with Ciphert. But first, before we get into this episode with Jacob from Zora, a quick disclaimer. Ryan is an investor in Zora.

He is also out today, as you can tell, he is out having some fantastic vacation time with his family. And so that is our disclaimer there. And there are some themes in this episode that I would like to implant into the listener's brain before we dive in there. There's three things that I'd like to pull out.

First, lowering the barriers to entry. Of course, we all know that layer two's reduced gas fees, but specifically inside of the context of artists and artistic creation, lowering the barriers to entry, I think there's a deep conversation about what that unlocks and what that can do for the world of on-chain art. And so that's the first theme, is lowering the barriers to entry?

How is that unique in the conversation of digital creation and digital expression? Not just lowering gas fees, but definitely lowering gas fees, but also what else does that do when there's the barriers to producing art go down to the absolute minimum? So that's the first theme. The second theme, pushing complexity to the margins. This is something that I think uniquely sets Zora apart from other NFT minting platforms. The unopinionated nature of Zora where if you have an idea, Zora does not constrain it as a platform. It is meant to fully enable artists to do crazy weird things.

without the opinions of Zora saying, like, hey, that's too weird. Don't do that here. Zora is a platform that allows artists to maximally experiment. And that just means pushing complexity to the margins. That is a theme that I have brought up many, many times on bankless, pushing complexity to the margins. That's one of the themes of this episode. And then the last theme is the frontiers of digital expression.

When you have lowering the barriers to entry, when you push complexity to the margins, we find a new frontier. And since we are talking about the frontier of media and art, that frontier, Jacob has a ton of great ideas about, and I ask him about the idea of digital expression, the frontier of digital expression towards the very end of this episode. So these are the themes that I think should guide you through this conversation. And I'm really excited for Bankless Nation, you to listen to this conversation with Jacob from Zora. He has a big brain thinker and has a very articulate vision for what the world of on-chain expression can become. So let's go

ahead and start talking to Jacob from Zora. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, especially Cracken, our preferred exchange for crypto in 2023. If If you do not have an account with Cracken, consider clicking the link in the show notes to get one today. Let's go hear from them right now. Cracken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Cracken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real-time market data and lightning-fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface.

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So if you want to get started with Anbyr, all the links that you need are in the show notes. Bankless Nation, I would love to introduce you to Jacob, the co-founder of Zora. Started in 2020, Zora is a platform for creators and collectors to mingle around a common campfire of digital creations. Zora has all sorts of toolkits for all kinds of digital file formats to start their life as on-chain artworks to be minted on-chain. And today we are here to learn exactly how Zora is expanding, where it's going next. and Jacob is hopefully going to guide us along on that journey. Jacob, welcome to bankless. Hey, thanks for having me.

Happy to be here. I'm really excited for this conversation. I really want to open up this conversation of digital expression, digital art, with this question for you, Jacob. Jacob, is the internet driving itself off a cliff? Is the internet driving itself off a cliff? Well, I've always had this thing where it's like, I don't think we actually ever reached the internet.

Or like, we never really escaped internets. like if you think about the internet today it's really like six really really really big platforms and we had like a brief moment where the internet started and then you know kind of like the 90s with the browser and some formative like new platforms coming online but really would be living in like what i would just call like this mega internet for the past like 10 years mostly defined by social media um so i actually think we're getting closer to getting back to the original internet with blockchains and bringing information on chain and making it public open. So yeah, that would be my answer to that question. I think your answer is like, hey,

there is a true nature of the expression of the internet. And for the last 10 years, we've accidentally gone down the corp version of internet side quest. And I think you're saying that, hey, it's now with Web3, we're getting back on track. Yeah, it's more open, put simply. It's like, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the technical approach of social media. It was like, it was invented pre-blockchain. But blockchain's kind of help us get to. a more open and public system by default. So yeah, I don't think we're driving off a cliff from the internet. I think we're actually getting closer to the original vision of the internet because

of blockchain. The original vision of the internet. Can you just unpack what does that mean to you? And what should that mean for us, the original vision of the internet? Yeah, to me that means open and free access to information. I think in its simplest turns. And then part of that is like, yeah, how do we keep? connect and share that information together.

Yeah. And for what reasons was you say that it's been missing in the last like five, 10 years of the current internet? Like, why do we not have this? I think the other piece of that puzzle is actually the value piece. So there's this great Stuart Brand quote from the 1980s, kind of when, you know, a lot of people were like gicking out about the early internet, which is like, information. wants to be free, but information also wants to be valuable, and that tension will not go away.

And that was kind of like this big philosophical tension where it's like, you know, information wants to be widely spread. You know, the more that everyone knows, the kind of like the better the world can get more generally. But because of the, you know, we didn't have blockchains essentially, but like the way that we kind of create and capture value around information has mostly been dependent on trusted platforms. So it's like, you know, we kind of construct, the wall garden and that's built out of either advertising or paywalls and there's always this like consistent tension of like well the platform is the one that's like determining determining how value is captured for the people that are creating that information be it videos or songs or music or IP

whatever it might be and i think what we've seen over the past kind of like 10 years of social media is that the platforms are the ones that kind of make, it's essentially all of that value that's created on those platforms. So it's like, if you happen to be a top 0.1% creator on Spotify or YouTube, you can make a living for it. But everyone else who's kind of creating and sharing that media and that information is not, you know, seeing any value from that. So you can create and share that media, but you're not necessarily able to capture all of the value from So I'd say that's the piece that's been going wrong or not even wrong. It's just the piece that hasn't been there up until now.

Yeah. So when you add the puzzle piece of a blockchain, the actual expression of value into this component, I think what you're illustrating to me is like these wild garden platforms, the Spotify's, the YouTube, the apples, the walled garden nature of it was kind of like a necessary evil to produce the value. because prior to Web 2 there was nothing, right? There was no monetization. Right.

And then we created these walled gardens in an attempt to actually create some value for some people as like, you know, we have these middlemen creating this structure. But I think what you're saying is like you add in the blockchain puzzle piece and you get the same product. You get the same net outbound product, which is we have valuable creations but without the walled garden structures that we've come to have dominate the. the internet landscape. Am I tapping into something here? Yeah, I think that's right. I think maybe what I'm saying more explicitly is that I think blockchains and specifically NFTs might actually sort like kind of solve that multi-decade tension of like simultaneously free and valuable. If you think about an NFT, if like you meant an image, you meant a song, it's now publicly accessible to the entire internet, you know, including people who want to listen and enjoy

to that media, but then also the other developers who want to build their own platforms and experiences on top of it. And none of that sacrificing value capture for the creator, because they're able to sell that NFT, they're able to earn from that NFT over time. So yeah, maybe that is actually solving that inherent tension of the internet, which is information wants to be free, but it also wants to be valuable. And NFTs are kind of like a very neat, you know, open solution to that problem where it's like, you know, for the social media era, I think it's, uh, advertising has been the best possible solution to that problem because it's like, hey, you can like consume this for free and we're going to monetize the platform by like showing you ads every now and then.

Maybe NFTs are a better progression where it's like, well, if you're increasingly minting that content, making it free and open to everyone and you're getting that kind of a value back in the form of the asset of the NFT itself and then also whatever the ETH has been earned from minting it, that might get us one step further than the ads-based model and how to be free and valuable at the same time. And the reason why I wanted to go down this quick rabbit hole of trying to define what we're actually talking about here is because I've actually had a hard time defining what Zora actually is.

Which is because like, you know, people know Zora. It's a place to mint your NFTs, right? It's like super rare. But it's not quite like super rare, right? And it's, you know, it's an NFT like browser. You can check out different NFTs, kind of like OpenC. But it's not quite like OpenC either. And so the boundaries around Zora seem to be very fuzzy to me.

And I think that's almost intentional. And so I'm wondering if I could just elevate to you the higher question of just like, what deeply is Zora? What does it want to become? Well, I guess the way we describe ourselves is like the best place to mint on Ethereum. So that's like the very kind of like tactical one sentence description. A level above that is like, yeah, we want to help. bring imagination on chain. And then the question is like, well, why do we want to help bring

imagination on chain? And it's exactly because of what we were just talking about. It's like we want to help information be free and valuable on the internet or essentially reveal the value of everything that we're creating and doing in our daily lives on social media and everything like that and kind of like skew the value part of the equation way back to the creator side versus the platform side. So, yeah, I guess like there's a million different dimensions to it and maybe like the story of like how Zora Sardin and stuff like that can kind of inform it. But the way that's kind of netted out to Zora today is like, yeah, we make it, we want to make

it as easy as possible for creators to mint their work. And then similarly make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for collectors who love and enjoy that art and media and content to collect it and support them. support the creator of it. So yeah, the result is a platform that looks like Zora that is, hey, you can show up, you can upload your imagination, an ETH, and then on the collector side, it's like, hey, you can start to experience all of this awesome art, media, and content in a completely free environment.

And if you happen to like it, you can collect it. I think there's two specific frontiers that are unique here. One is the ease in minting your imagination. You're using the word imagination rather than your JPEG or your MP3 or your MP4 or like pick your file format, right? And so that is a whole entire frontier of artistic expression. And then you're also saying like the easiest possible place for both sides of the market, right? The supply side, the creators and then the demand side, the collectors. And so Zora is a platform, just like Spotify, just like YouTube, just like super rare, just like OpenC.

But the emphasis on the easiest possible, I think, is also worth unpacking. Because when you have any file format, aka your imagination, and then you also have the easiest possible, like a bunch of new frontier, new fertile land shows up in the crosshairs there. And so for a brief moment in time in 2021, crypto became very, very cool, very brief moment. like artists flocked to Ethereum and other crypto platforms as like a place to experiment with like new modalities of digital expression. And then we accidentally turned everything into Ponzi's, but never mind that part. I just kind of want to focus on the experimentation with digital expression here. Can you like just help articulate and describe what what the frontier is that we've unlocked here?

What does this world of on-chain expression and experimentation look like to you as we go forward into the future? Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe it kind of like speaks to the 2021 piece. I think like, yeah, we obviously had a huge kind of mania or awakening or, you know, kind of collective agreement that it's like, oh, wait, like NFTs are valuable. It doesn't matter if anyone else can right click, save as the image. We are all inherently kind of agreeing and understanding that NFTs as an object that can be bought and sold and traded are inherently valuable and represent ownership in that JPEG or, you know,

the MP3 or whatever the file might be. And that's like a huge deal. It's like when a new value system shows up, yeah, obviously you'll see a lot of excitement and experimentation. But I think that the overwhelming form factor we saw for 2021 was kind of like the 10k pfp. And then kind of in parallel, we saw experimentation around like the one of one art market, which is like, hey, you can take a singular image, bring it on chain option as a one of one. And like that can hold that can hold value. I think where we are today is there's kind of like two shifts that are happening that we kind of are at the forefront of and pushing, which is one, instead of seeing just like this 10K PFP kind of like collectible style market, we increasingly think it makes sense for all forms of media and content to go on chain in exactly the same way. So it's like, well, if you, yes, you can mint the JPEG of this kind of like profile picture looking collectible, but why don't you mint this like, you know, visual artwork. made shared on Instagram and got hundreds of thousands of likes for. Like that that is inherently

valuable. This is in something that inherently your community loves. Like that makes just as much sense on chain. And then the other track is that I think the market has been evolving and experimenting, you know, uh, in addition to one of ones, which has been the kind of timed addition, um, or like the open edition format that we kind of, um, have been leaning into quite heavily, which is, hey, like instead of just minting it and only allowing one person, to collect it at the time. It's kind of absurd when you think about it in the sense of the internet. It's like, oh, hey, like you had 50 people literally throw money at you in an auction.

You turned 49 of those people away with their money and you only let one person have it. It's like, well, what if there's a model that could let more than just one person at the time have it when, you know, there's no physical constraint here. Like it's not like the artist has to, you know, individually produce each video. It's like part of the internet is it can. be broadly reproduced. So the timed open edition format is basically like, hey, anyone who happens to be here at the time can mint. And if that's one person, great. If that's like 100,000 people, amazing. You've got now 100,000 collectors of this video or this image or whatever it is at the time. So I think where we are now, you know, in 2023, a couple years after 2021 is, yeah, like,

we're much more focused on the kind of content and media focus form factor. which looks very different to OpenC as a marketplace. Like Zora looks and feels a lot more like a YouTube or even a Tumblr or something like that, where it is actually about enjoying the content. And then, yeah, the model of which people are kind of like collecting is, hey, you can show up and you can minch an addition of that piece of media. So, yeah, and then I guess the third maybe implicit piece, which I think is like, you know, very,

not unique to Zora, but something that's very a big part of how we build is like, we're like very much on-chain maximalists. So a lot of our experimentation over the past three years is like, how do you bring as much of this on-chain as possible, as pragmatically as possible? And then how can you lead into the unique superpowers of protocols to do that? So while Zora is that we do have a platform, you know, the website Zora.co, everything is built on essentially these custom-built protocols and smart contracts that we've kind of engineered, that make it one easy and cost effective to bring things on chain and then two easy and cost effective to distribute them as widely as possible and you know kind of tie the connection between

platform and protocol as best we can to to make that simple so that's that's kind of like the sum total of all of those those three things like focus on content and media the timed open edition model and then like building things on chain is probably a good Venn diagram with like Zora in the middle and gives a good picture of what we did. Yeah, the ethos that I think you're expressing is, is that Zora is built in a way that doesn't want to get in the way. Whereas it's meant to me be a means to an end. But like with other platforms, both Web 2 and Web 3, they impart some sort of like, you come to us to do this, to do this one thing inside of this constrained environment. And we are specialists inside of that

constrained environment. But it seems to be that Zora's is trying to be as constraint-free as possible, as in is just meant to service broad needs. And other people, the artists can produce constraints, but not Zora. Or the collectors can produce constraints, but not Zora. And Zora allows for the maximum expression of all parties without imparting some sort of like top-down, here is what we are for, here's what we are for, here's what we are due here is why you would come to us. This is like the kind of the vibe I'm tapping into. Maybe you could expand on it a little bit better. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's, maybe the variation on that is like, I think we've built a very, very specific tool, which is you

show up, you have some creative piece of media or work, you mint it and then collectors can mint it, you know, you bring it on chain and then collectors can mint it. That's like a heavily opinionated. That's a very simple tool or machine. And then, yeah, I guess, you know, creator shows up and they get their creator and smart contracts and then people can collect. But yes, we kind of try and make it as open as possible because we want to, one, give artists the tools to push the limit of what they can mint. So it's like, yes, you can show up with like a video or a song or an image, but you can also mint, you know, HTML and websites.

Or if you're like really in the weeds as an artist, you can actually write your own custom metadata renderer on chain and start doing more like art blocks generative and like very novel on chain artworks that you can plug into the zora smart contracts so it's like a very simple tool that kind of has these open ends that let you kind of bring your own creativity in whatever form that is which is being really interesting like uh yeah there's like the html editions that we released i guess a couple of weeks ago being cool to see because it's like i don't know they're like interactive and people are even minting games and stuff like that. And then on the custom metadata renderer side,

it's like, oh, wow, like we're seeing some like further experimentation on the generative side that kind of harks back to like the early art blocks days. So, yeah, specific tool, but like generic application is maybe the way to say it. Yeah, and I've always appreciated this line that artists live on the frontier, as in artists always live where there is the most unknown. They always are experimenting. And if we just had like a Azora alternative that was like, you can only upload JPEGs under four megabytes, highly constraining and artists would not be able to experiment very well.

And I think like one of the ethos that Zora is trying to double down on is that any sort of constraint comes out of the expression of the artist. So a more free platform allows artists to do whatever. And if you, like some people might have been listening to that and listening to hear you say, like, yeah, you can mint HTML. And a lot of people are like, but why? And the artists are like, what can I do with that? And I think that's like unleashing constraints and making sure the artist art as enabled as possible is what contributes to the most amount of experimentation.

And I think that conversation about constraints can actually lead us to where we have an announcement to make, Zora has an announcement to make. But maybe we can talk about the constraints of the Zora platform as it has stood up to this point and like what has been needed to to unleash further experimentation. So what are the big constraints in web three creation and on-chain creation that Zora is trying to tackle? Yeah, great question. So yeah, I guess we've had like a pretty exceptional 2023 so far. Like I think we're close to, I think we're like 850,000 collectors just this year. So like we have people minting like every other block on Ethereum. And one of the kind of internal things that we track is,

You know, like obviously mint throughput and then gas price. And what we've found is that like a huge kind of structural inhibitor to like growth and accessibility of being able to like collect on chain is the gas price, especially in the timed open edition format where it's like a lot of these NFTs are like free to like $20. You know, a $20 gas price to mint a $20 object or a $20 gas price to mint a free NFT starts to actually like get in the way of the collecting. experience and puts up a hard barrier. And for us, where we see like millions of NFTs minted, it's like, oh, we actually feel

like we're kind of reaching the upper limits of Ethereum main net as a network. And that's actually like a huge structural thing that we've been looking to solve, which has kind of pushed us into the L2 world. And I think where we've spent like months essentially kind of exploring all the different options and where we've netted out is that we're going to be launching the Zora L2 built on the OP stack or like the optimism stack. We're also going to be kind of like adding every other network within Zora as well to give creators the choice of their network for whatever they're trying to do.

But yeah, for us, we've kind of decided to take the leap and launch the Zora L2 or like the Zora network built on optimism, which is like really exciting as a way to kind of structurally solve that that gas price issue. The Zora layer two. So the Zora, the digital campfire creation space of collectors and creators are getting its own layer two, its own home. How would you describe, so first off, congratulations. That's huge. That's a huge lift.

How would you describe just the nature of this layer two, right? Because we have the generalized optimistic roll-ups of Arbitrum and optimism, which each have their own flavor. right, Arbitrum is a defy-heavy ecosystem. Optimism is experimenting in many different fronts. Zora is specifically about on-chain creations. But would you call the Zora layer two like an app chain? Like it's a single-service roll-up meant to do one thing. How would you describe the flavor or what the purpose of the layer two is?

Yeah, that's a great question. I guess is it an app chain or not? I think we think of it more of an ecosystem or it is like, specifically a home for creators. Like Zora, by nature of our kind of protocol approach has like a pretty fruitful ecosystem of like different platforms and apps built on it. So like Zora, I don't think, well, we know we're not going to be the only app built on this network.

Like we kind of on our L2 website have a list of probably like 30 of the top NFT tools and platforms in the space that are going to be moving across and building on Zora as well. So I think it's it's much more of an ecosystem than it is an app. chain. And then, yeah, I think the L2 era we're heading into for Ethereum generally is quite interesting. Like, the way we thought about is like, yes, you're right, there's like arbitrum and optimism. They're kind of these like great generic catch-all L-2s. I think base has been fascinating to see play out because I think it's kind of like opened up kind of the window into the future of where we're heading, which is like, yes, we will see, I think, an

increasing number of L-2s. And in, some sense, like L2s are approaching, like, a commodity, if not already, like, the costs and complexity to deploy one of these DL2s is, like, going down, like, every month. So I think we're going to see a lot of these. And when you see, like, kind of a commodity marketplace, like, brand distribution and differentiation tend to be kind of, like, the core things that help you understand how things will play out. So it's like, there's a reason there's, you know, Tiffany, Tiffany Diamonds or like Nike sneakers or Starbucks coffee. Like they're each selling commodities, but like their unique approach helps them kind of like

excel in the market. So for Zora, yeah, like we have, I think we have a pretty incredible brand that's like loved by the, you know, artistic and creative community as well as like pockets of the Ethereum community, of course. Our distribution has been like growing pretty substantially over the past year. And then for the differentiation piece, I think like, Like, we're really excited to start nerding out on the, the interesting applications and economics that you can pass up the stack from essentially running a sequencer.

So it's like, you know, if we, we will be launching on like optimism, main net as well, but something that we don't have access to on optimism is the gas fees that get earned from the sequencer. And by running our own one and we do start earning some of those gas fees from the sequencer, we can then use that to then further abstract away the gas cost and transactions for creators and then collectors too, which we think will just continue to kind of like unlock further growth for us in the ecosystem. So that was kind of like a big thing for us where it's like, yes, I think we take the brand

and distribution box. But on the differentiation side, I think a whole new universe of kind of like gas abstraction and subsidizing and things get unlocked by actually running that sequencer and the network itself. So that was like the long-term exciting piece for us that we're excited to build around. But the net result of all of that is like, yeah, we've kind of created this home for creators and artists to like put their work on an Ethereum ML2 and kind of like push ahead and keep running with the growth that we're all seeing. Metamask has something new.

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what would the topology of Zora look like after this layer two is up and running? I think to everyday people who are using Zora to create and collect, not that much changes. You'll show up to Zora.com. We've put a lot of, of effort into the multi-chain experience. So it's essentially nothing really changes. Like if you go to like a mint page, you'll be able to see what network the NFT's being minted on. But you don't have to do any complex network switching and bouncing around. It's like Zora as you've always known it. So it's going to be multi-chain. And if you want to mint on it for the ether main net, you can. If you want to mint on Zora, you can. You want to mention optimism you can. We've got other chains in the

pipeline. Like that will be there. I think for and I think like, we'll have to keep pushing forward the platform for quite a considerable amount of time. I think like we have this huge ideal of the future where it's like, well, if we can create us, you know, kind of a successful enough network, maybe there will be tools that are even better than Zora that get built on it. And then Zora, our platform is just one of many websites and applications built on it. And we can kind of just like focus on the network. But I think for the foreseeable future, we're probably going to have to keep, you know, There's so many problems to solve from the user experience standpoint that we think we're in a really strong position to do that.

So I think in the short to medium term, it's like we'll kind of lean into some of the superpowers at the platform level that get unlocked from operating and like, you know, running a network. And then over time, it's like as the, as L2 decentralization becomes more known and like implemented, we can then start to expand that outwards and then, you know, learn what the position of like the Zora. platform is over time. But it's kind of like a, I was putting in like the note unknown bucket. It's like there's a million different ways that that could pan out. All we really focus on right now is let's just lower the barrier to entry and create the best UX possible and vertically integrating down to the network level is an important piece of that puzzle. So with the ability to mint on any layer two or even the Ethereum layer one, Zora, the Zora network is just offering like another place for that asset minting to happen. And,

perhaps there's benefits to having a layer two that is specifically for that one purpose of putting digital creations on chain, whereas with optimism, you're sharing block space and externalizing gas fees towards a different network. And if you mention your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, defy-d-Gems. Yeah, exactly. Maybe what you're saying is that, like, on the Zora network, on the Zora layer two, it's like 100% a place where almost all on-chain activities are on-chain creations.

And so there's probably some network effects of integrating the Zora network if you are a place that is interested in integrating with digital creations. Am I tapping into something here? Yeah, I think that's right. There's like two dimensions. There's the cultural and then there's the technical. Like optimism and arbitram have been around for quite some time. yet we haven't seen these types of ecosystems like emerge on those networks just yet.

And it could be because they're more like defy and financial or gaming or whatever it might be. Like they've just got their own kind of unique cultural phenomenon that they're tapping into that might not necessarily be art and media. So I think, yeah, artists and I guess the ecosystem generally is like, okay, cool. like this is a, this is a, a network kind of by an NFT team for NFTs. It's like got a rich history with artists and creators. Like this just kind of intuitively makes sense of like out of all the like L2s that exist, this probably makes the most sense to like mint my my work.

And then on the technical side, it's like because, because we're able to like tightly integrate the network into the platform, it might just be structurally the cheapest place to do that. So it's like you can go mint on a different network, but because those different networks don't also run their own tools on top purpose built for minting, it might always just cost more to do it there. So I think on the technical side, it's like we really just want to get the gas costs as low as possible for the creators and building down into the metal of the network

kind of lets you do that. So there's the cultural side and then there's the technical side. And I think those two things kind of make Zora a really compelling option for people who want to mint their work. So the niche of a layer two that's dedicated to, like, art and media is unclaimed. And Zora is saying, hey, we're claiming it. See, all that real estate, we're planting the Zora flag right, right in the middle of this. And maybe, like, in the world, like, we know that Spotify is working on token-gated access to songs and artists. and just access to some specific corners of Spotify that are not available if you don't have these tokens.

And it's not a very far stone's throw away from like, hey, like artists actually minting tokens, minting songs. Right. And maybe if you're Spotify or any other platform like this, they are, maybe they become convicted as like, okay, on chain media on Web 3 NFTs is the way to go. What network do we integrate? Do we integrate arbitram? Okay, maybe. Do we integrate optimism? Do we integrate the Ethereum Layer 1? Well, the Ethereum Layer 1 is really expensive. So there's no like shelling point of like what is the chain that you integrate if you are focused on media and art.

And so maybe this is like the shelling point that the Zora network is going after is like, hey, are you interested in the world of on chain media and art? Well, therefore you are interested in Zora. Yeah, exactly. I think that's exactly right. And then in the same way we want to kind of experiment with passing that economics up into creators and collect. to abstract away that gas. We also want to do the same thing for, for developers too. I think there's like some great early implementations of models like this, like CSR and like Kanto. And I think like there's there's a whole world of possibilities where it's like we could

potentially explore bringing that into the OP stack too. So I think, yes, I think you're right. Like there's the shelling point aspect where it's like, oh, there's media here. And like this seems to be where this is the best place to put art and media on chain. And then also there's like the technical benefits that can come from the technical and economic benefits that can come from doing that too, which I think it would be interesting to play around with. So yeah, I think I don't think it's as much like claim that space. Like we want to kind of put Zora out there and we're going to be supporting all these other networks too in Zora. And you know, we're kind of we're not just going to like kind of put everyone into Zora from our website.

Like we just like let's let's see if this is all correct. let's take a long-term view and see what we can lean into. But let's not ignore the fact that other artists and creators might want to mint on other networks and let's give them that ability because we have such a great tool for that. So yeah, it's going to be going to be cool to see how it plays out. Just a few more technical questions. The data from the files that are minted on chain, is that a part of this conversation? Is the Zora chain going to host data or how does like the actual files be stored somewhere or anywhere?

Yeah, this is a good question. So for the tools we've built, we mostly default to IPFS. Some people who played around with their own custom metadata renderers, like they might choose RWeave or like some people who will even just like kind of host it essentially. But yeah, the Zora L2 doesn't have any impact on where or how things are stored. We'll just keep defaulting to IPFS. And then obviously like anyone who knows what they're doing can set and choose where they store their their information they can store wherever they want.

But we default to IPFS. So with a choice of using the OP stack, the optimism collective is like, yay, more people using the OP stack. But then there's another part of that conversation, which is the final form of joining the OP collective is actually using the same sequencer. So how do you, is there a vision or a strategy with the Zora network's relationship with the optimism super chain? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, we're excited to kind of like experiment and participate in the super chain. I think it's like it's all very early. But I agree with the ideals. It's like you should be able to easily port your assets and your NFTs between these chains very easily. We should get the bridging experience to either not have to exist at all or where it does exist. It's like very easy and safe. And that if we do see, you know, essentially these chains forming per use case or per ecosystem

or per app or all of the above, and there's going to be a lot of these things. Connecting them in the most open and transparent way possible is going to be important. So I think, yeah, we're excited to kind of like help contribute however we can for the NFT piece of that equation as the super chain or like in the super chain, but it's like, you know, it's not particularly built out yet. It's early and there's like a lot of work that needs to be done. So yeah, we're down to do the work. But I would say it is early.

But I agree with the vision. The last time I talked to the the OP team that was more or less the same vibe that they gave is like, hey, using the OP stack is like the first foot in the door that you need to make to commit to the longer term super chain vision. And the longer term super chain vision is a bunch of just like research and development and eventually we'll get there. But merely saying that we are going to use the OP stack is like the first step to saying like, hey, we can be a part of that. and in tandem with the rest of the super chain, we'll kind of figure it out as it goes. Exactly. Yeah, like standardization is like very good.

As we know, it's like, ESC 721 means it's like, well, hey, if we, all these competing platforms can at least agree on a shared standard, you get all these amazing use cases because composability is 100 times easier. So if like OP stack continues to kind of be

the developer shelling point or the standard for how you create an L2, then the bridging experience, the hosting experience, the sequencer, like all of the tools required to stand up one of these L2s should get significantly better because the developer doesn't have to do something bespoke every time.

All they have to do is add a new chain ID and then they know everything's going to work as expected because it's following the Shed standard. So yeah, I would agree. The standard is like a really crucial and important first step, gives a good step towards composability, and then you get to like focus the level up the stack now, which is like, okay, now what's all the complex?

and risks and opportunities that open up if we can agree that this layer is consistent. So yeah, it's all part of the natural evolution of the space, I think, and I think it's good. So Zora has not made it any secret that eventually there will be a token. Now that we have a network, is the token relevant here? Or like, where is the token discussion these days about Zora? Yeah, I think the way we've always thought about a token is like, well, one, we, one, just the principle of community ownership is like one of the huge superpowers of crypto. So it's like, of course that's an ideal. And then two is, I think tokens are amazing if they can help

meaningfully decentralize wherever possible. And then if there's like obviously Dow components, it's like, is this actually helping create an organization? Like I think there's like thousands of tokens out there, but there's like very few working on-chain organizations that can like utilize these tokens. So I've always like paid attention to like, well, what are the token models that are kind of pushing us into like a working and meaningfully decentralized organization on the Dow side? And then yeah, I guess like the more network focus direction is like well trodden. Like we we know that tokens are an amazing tool to like decentralize a network. So yeah, I think for us it's always a it's always part of the vision and a long term ideal. But like a similar to

like the super chain, decentralizing sequences is a really hard, unsolved problem. So there isn't like, there isn't like a very straightforward way to like just turn on a token and then immediately start decentralizing. Like that's just not where the technology is at. So I think,

yeah, we're hopeful for that future, but I'd say it's probably going to be until those breakthroughs happen. It's like we're just going to be heads down building the best possible product and tools we can using everything we have at, um, at Affingitips basically. So, yeah.

With regards to the timing of the Zora network, where are we at? When does it launch? When can users touch it? When can developers build on it? Like, what's the release plan? Great question. Well, live right now, chain ID is 7-7s. So, yeah, we deployed main net with optimism last week.

Our rollout into the product and tool set is happening as we speak and should be there later today, but yeah, I guess June 21st, so the summer solstice is when we're, we're kind of announcing and rolling out our network, which I think is very apt, heading into Azora summer, or I guess L2 summer more generally. So, yeah, it should all be there. But, yeah, chain ID is seven-seventh-se. We will get all of those links and information into the show notes on both of YouTube. And, Jacob, you're saying today, we're recording this on the 20th, but you mean for release on

the 21st. So today the 21st is when it gets released. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Beautiful. Awesome. And Jacob, since I have you here, there's just a few more conversations that I want to unpack with you. This idea of on hyphen chain versus on chain. Yeah. The spelling between these two things. What is the answer and why is that answer important? It's very clearly on chain with no hyphen. I think as we've seen with all technological words and names like online or email or whatever it might be. They might be grammatically correct at the time, but I think as the technology gets more broadly adopted, and frankly, people stop having the effort of typing a whole extra character every time. I think like on chain without the hyphen is

here to say. And I think it's important because it kind of reflects the reality, which is like, this is a real technology. It's like, it's getting increasingly usable. And it's, able to, you know, have a real impact on people of, like, day to day. And it's kind of like, I think it's, it's at a new level of, like, maturity. And then, yeah, I just don't want to type a hyphen every time. So it just looks clunky. Yeah, it's like I, I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm totally fine with people typing on chain with a hyphen so long as they're logically consistent and also type online or email with a hyphen. So I think that's totally fine. but you just have to be consistent.

Jacob, if anyone has read your writing from over the years and also just been like paying attention to the Zora brand, I think there's a subtext of all of that, which is that the future is weird. And I think you're someone who can articulate like how weird it's going to be or at least why it's going to be weird. So maybe with like we have these new technological innovations, like the optimism super chain,

the Zora network inside of that ecosystem. We have the ability to, like you say, mint your imagination and therefore other people can collect imaginations. We have new frontiers of artistic experimentation mixed with on-chain technologies. I'm wondering, like, if you can just like fast forward ourselves in five years, the Zora network is maximally successful.

It's doing everything that you want it to be doing. People are using it in new and weird ways. What does that future look like? What does that mean for collectors? What does that mean for artists, for brands, for communities? Okay, just explain perhaps how your imagination for the future as it relates to all of these technologies. Yeah, big, big, big question. I think at the highest level, we should see society's ability to go from idea to reality,

meaningfully improve. So I think how to, like, yeah, so basically we should be, if like someone has the spark of an idea and puts it out on the internet, The ability for people to organize and make that idea a reality maybe gets like 10 times faster in the absolute wild success case. I think the thinking behind that is like I've, the thing that really got me into crypto like a decade ago was kind of realizing that you could create a cryptocurrency for like any idea. That was like my first spark that really got me into it. There was like counterparty and colored coins on Bitcoin were really cool to me because I was like

oh wait, like you could create a token for like a film. Like right now it's like if you wanted to organize around a film, like there's maybe Kickstarter on one end and then multi-billion dollar studio on the other end. And the in-between is actually quite sparse. And I've always loved crypto as like it is a value system. And if we can start to value things in a different way that's on the internet, we should be able to organize around those ideas on the internet too. So like NFTs, I feel like in their most ideal success case, it's like we can immediately start

to understand and capture the value and kind of collective energy around an idea. And then if you have it in an NFT form by nature of being on chain, maybe it makes it significantly easier to start to organize around them. So instead of having to do a traditional company in whatever jurisdiction you might be, which for me at the time was like, you know, being an Australian. it's like, well, now it's like instead of having to create like a traditional company, you can organize like a Dow or a token around it and maybe you can find the best people on the internet at the time who are really into it to like help get closer to that.

So yeah, I don't know if that's a five-year thing. Maybe that's like a 25-year thing if it is that like kind of level of a breakthrough. But yeah, that that's the way that I relate to crypto. and I think like Zora is like in the direction it's building it's like we can create and kind of organize around ideas at their earliest stages and get to them being as real thing as fast as possible or at least faster than we have been able to up until this point. I think that really hooks in very well to the idea that we were talking about earlier, which is the idea of Zora as a very unconstra as a very unconstrained platform as in like any file type of any size of any type of data. Yeah. mixed with the fastest minting experience with the lowest gas fees. It's like all of a sudden we are unconstraining what it takes to put an idea on chain.

And you're also unconstraining what it takes to collect said idea. And so like the marketplace is massively unconstrained here. And so many, many, many types of ideas can become on chain. And then many, many, many types of collectors can agree or disagree with those ideas. And so not only can ideas and reality meet faster, just like you said, but we have more shots on goal for many more types of ideas. And all of a sudden that that becomes very, very viral and expressive and it's something that really gets me going. Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, and that's how I use Zora. Like I just kind of meant ideas and these, like a lot of things I write, I also meant too. But yeah, I think it's, yeah, in the same way, if we kind of, if we say that like social media disrupts like, newspapers in some sense. It's like, and that you can kind of see how technologically that's accurate, but it really misses the bigger picture. That same analogy where it's like maybe NFTs are disrupting like the patent system in a similar way where it's like, well, if the way that you can kind of put ideas out into the world, create and capture value around it and organize around it, yeah, maybe we can, we can do things together a lot faster and make sure that like

everyone who's creating that value is, like, rightly owning it. So you don't have to make that, like, trade off. This is kind of, like, the best of open source and also, like, open value, which is kind of cool. So, yeah, I think that's at least the vision. Is it possible? I think it is. It's just you have to make it more accessible and easy to use, which is obviously easier said than done.

So that's what we spend a lot of time on. Yeah. And another line that I see outside of the coming out of the Zoraverse is this idea of of expand Ethereum. Expand Ethereum. What does that mean? Well, I think Ethereum is like a fundamental breakthrough and as a value system as a way that we can kind of build infrastructure on the

internet. Ethereum mainnet is like currently limited in how far it can go. Like it's a number of transactions per second, the cost to use it. So I think like the way that we've always wanted to kind of, like for us to help bring Ethereum to like a billion people, we're going to need some breakthroughs and pieces of infrastructure like layer twos. So the way, I think why it's expanded Ethereum is it's not like Zora's going out into the market and trying to create like a new L1 or a thing that's trying to like compete with Ethereum. It's like it's quite the opposite where like building directly

on top of Ethereum, we want to like help expand it to as many people as possible and make it as easy as and accessible for people to use Ethereum. And then hopefully build the bridges and pieces that, you know, if a piece of meteor or content on the Zora network gets to a point of value where people actually want to bring it to main net, they absolutely can. So I think, yeah, I think it's like a, it's a pithy way to kind of show that it's like, yeah, Zora as an L2 is really just like Zora on Ethereum like it always has been. And then, yeah, I guess I just like a kind of deep belief in

Ethereum is an underlying technology, I guess, to some extent, we are kind of Ethereum maximalists, so it's like a cool way to kind of express that. So, yeah, it kind of like sums up our approach with that L2, I guess. Well, Jacob, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, the idea of being able to mint an idea and have that idea be permissionously enter the marketplace of idea collectors. It makes me very, very excited. If people want to learn more about Zora or get started with Zora network, or really just go down the Zora rabbit hole. Where should they go?

Zora.co. And then, um, yes, it's Z-O-R-A dot CO. And then on Twitter where, um, our Z-O-R-A. So, O-U-R-Z-O-R-A. Um, and then, yeah, David, you should mint an idea and then tweet that out and maybe we can all collect one of your, uh, first ideas. One of my first. It'd be fun. Yeah. Why not?

First, I need to have an idea. Jacob, this has been fantastic. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I really appreciate your time, sir. Yeah, likewise. Thanks, David. Bankless Station, you know the deal. ETH is risky, crypto is risky, DFI is risky. Minting ideas could also be risky, but we should mint them anyways. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.