The Startup Ideas Podcast - The Future of Gaming With Ryan Wyatt

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

What does the future of gaming look like on the blockchain? We’re joined by a leader in the space Ryan Wyatt (@Fwiz). He’s the former global head of gaming partnerships at Google and head of gaming at YouTube, where he also led their virtual and augmented reality business. Wyatt now serves as the CEO of Polygon Studios. In this episode of Where It Happens, Ryan discusses his path from high school gamer to successful businessman, the future of blockchain gaming, and the power behind play-to-earn.►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comTHIS EPISODERyan Wyatt: https://twitter.com/FwizSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS►► This episode is brought to you by Outer. Spring is in the air in both NYC and Miami, and we can’t get enough of our Outer outdoor furniture. Their furniture looks incredible and is durable. Personally, we love the Outdoor Loveseat.Right now for our audience exclusively they are offering $300 off any product + free shipping until May 1. This is one of the most generous offers of any sponsor we’ve had. Did we mention they have a 2-week free trial? Go to https://www.liveouter.com/room to get the deal.►► This episode is also brought to you by LEX. We’re always looking for breakthrough businesses. And, our audience has repeatedly asked how they can invest in commercial real estate. Lex is the easy answer. LEX turns individual buildings into public stocks via IPO, so you can invest, trade, and manage your own portfolio of high-quality commercial real estate. It’s so simple to get started today.Sign up for free at https://www.lex-markets.com/room and get a $50 bonus exclusively for our audience when you deposit at least $500. It’s a no-brainer.

Interested in investing in commercial real estate, but not sure where to start? Me too. Well, Lex has created a new way for you to invest in real estate. Lex turns individual buildings into public stocks via IPO, so you can invest, trade, and manage your own portfolio of high-quality commercial real estate. Any U.S. investor can open a Lex account, browse opportunities in various asset classes such as multifamily and office buildings, and buy shares of these individual buildings.

Lex opens up direct and tax advantage ownership in an asset class that has previously been inaccessible to most investors. Get started today and explore Lex's live assets in New York City and an upcoming IPO in Seattle. Sign up for free at Lex dash markets.com slash room and get a $50 bonus when you deposit at least $500. 93% of your life has spent indoors, but so many of our best moments are outdoors. That's why I'm so excited to share with you, Outer. Outer makes the world's most beautiful, comfortable, and durable outdoor furniture. When I moved to New York last year and got a new place, one of my priorities was finding an outdoor workspace. Outer's products have provided me

with that game-changing experience. I now have outdoor furniture that's durable, that has modular designs. It has life-proof material that withstands the weather and the fluctuations that New York often brings. They have a patented built-in outer shell cover to keep your furniture dry from rain and dew. It's the how did no one think of this before product for me on the outdoor furniture front. I've absolutely loved it and I know you will too. See the difference at live outer.com slash room. And now through May 1st, you'll get $300 off plus free shipping. Again, that's live outer o-u-t-e-r-com slash room and get $300 off plus free shipping only available to our podcast listeners you're going to absolutely love it dude your haircut looks good man thank you fresh it's fresh

it's uh i feel like it's got clean shape to it um still got some good height good what are you got for product in there today ask me how much i spent on this haircut do i want to know Am I going to feel bad because it's so low or am I going to be embarrassed for you because it's so high? Just look at the product. You said you like the haircut. There's no way to not offend you with the answer here because either I go high and you're like, oh, what? Is it, am I that rich haircut guy or I go or I go low and you're like, does it look bad? 80 bucks.

18 Canadian dollars. Wow. 13 U.S. dollars. Oh, no haircut inflation in, in, in, um, $18 Canadian dollars. in Canada these days, huh? Nice. Yeah. Nice. I, dude, I, I still, I think I pay 65 for a haircut, which feels high, but you kind of get like a whole experience out of it. Like I get, you get a shoulder massage, you get the like warm towel finish and stuff. So it's a little bit of like, it's almost like a spa day that you're paying for. And I don't know. I like to treat myself with

it. It's one of my guilty pleasures. Totally. Well, what do you got? What do you want to talk about today? Oh, man. Well, we have an awesome game. guest coming on, Ryan Wyatt, who is sort of a microcosm of this whole, like, Web 2 to Web 3 shift and transition. I mean, he's a Web 2 senior, senior executive at Google, YouTube. He was the head of gaming and now has, like, fully red-pilled and joined Polygon Studios as CEO. So we have him on. And given that fact, I feel like a good lead in is we have to talk about some cool Web3 shit that's been happening. And one of the latest, which I wanted to just pick your brain on, was around this whole Yugo Labs acquisition of the Larva Labs IP.

So Yuga Labs being the board Ape Yacht Club's creators, acquired the IP of Cryptopunks and Mebits, which are under the Larva Labs umbrella. And I want to talk about that. And then I also want to talk about Stripe Crypto because that's a big deal. So which one do you want to, which one do you want to start on? Let's start with Stripe. Okay. So for people who aren't familiar, Stripe,

I mean, massive behemoth right now. I actually recently got an opportunity to invest in a secondary sale at Stripe, which you and I and others in our friend group have been joking about for a while was like something we were trying to do. But the most recent valuation I saw was like $215 billion. So I passed on it personally. I'm probably going to be an idiot for passing on it. But the old like this has to become a trillion dollar company for me to get any sort of good return on it.

just not for me personally. So it's a massive like payments behemoth. They're kind of like the rails, the infrastructure rails of payments globally. Their whole mission is they're going to expand the GDP of the internet, which I really like. They're an amazing founding team. But recently they rolled out and entered into crypto. And they did it in pretty prototypical stripe fashion, which was they didn't roll out one tiny feature or feature set and say like, hey, we're in crypto.

They kind of threw the whole fucking thing at you and went into everything. And it was a big deal. I mean, they rolled out everything from like KYC exchanges, wallet enablement to, you know, all of the kind of fiat to crypto on ramps, basically full support for crypto businesses. So I'm curious what your thoughts were on it and what it means for the space. I mean, so when I first thought I was, well, first of all, pleasantly. surprised. What it means for the space is like, I mean, it's huge for the space, like, Stripe, $200 billion company, basically giving these sets of APIs is like, you know, a huge

stamp of approval for like so many big companies. So love that. It's like the equivalent of Shopify doing Shopify NFTs and them going into that. So I feel really good about that. I also remember a time when Stripe, okay, this is not the first time that Stripe has gone into crypto. Okay. Stripe has gone into crypto. I think it was initially with Bitcoin in 2012. And then again in 2014, I believe. And then I think they shut it down, maybe in 16.

The TLDR in it was the CEO, I think his name is John Collison. Is that his name? Patrick Collison's the CEO, his brother. They're brothers. Patrick and John. I don't know what John's title is at the company. Patrick's kind of the face of the company. I think I remember John saying, like, when they shut it down, that we're just, like, not

ready for it. Like, it's just, it's too early. We tried. We, like, experiment, and it's too early. Interesting. Yeah. And in 20, I want to say 19 or 20, there was a bunch of job postings on the Stripe website, basically alluding to the fact that they were hiring a massive crypto team. I remember this. That had to be like 20 mid, late 20 when that was happening because you and I were already friends at that point. I remember us all texting about it. Exactly. So interesting. What I love about it is they like dabbled a few times. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they. They.

cut it short. And then they were like, okay, 2020 hits, it's here. We believe in it. We understand it. We're going like, we're going to build a Swiss army knife for crypto and we're going like all in. I just hope that we don't find ourselves in 12 months from now, 18 months from now. And they're just like, we tried it and we're not going to, you know, support it. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, the, the industrial logic behind it is very strong for them. You know, they probably saw what a lot of us have seen, that the number of businesses building on Web3 Rails or building crypto native rails has like 10x, or, you know, there was some stat like the number of developers, the number of, like, however you look at it, it's massively, massively scaled. And they are probably looking at it as both defensive and offensive move, right? They don't want someone to come in and be the like stripe of crypto and come in and build a better set of rails and infrastructure that kind of push them out from what could be a massive versioning market. So that's kind of the defensive side.

And then the offensive side says, you know, we can go out and actually expand the space and be a huge driver of new companies, you know, with actual Fiat on ramps today and companies that have built in the Fiat Web 2 world coming into Web 3 and actually drive, you know, to their point on the expansion of GDP on the Internet, the core mission statement for the company. They can actually help promote that within the crypto world. And so like I think of an example, I heard it, I think it was on the bankless podcast. They talked about. they use substack for their newsletter or convert kit rather you know for a lot of people like I'm going to be switching over to convert kit soon for my newsletter and the rails of that for any payments are stripe that's what you're collecting payment through stripe had previously never enabled crypto payments and so you know I have plenty of friends that are doing crypto newsletters

writing about crypto and they want to be able to collect you know in crypto right like there are people that are subscribers that want to be able to pay in crypto and that was never enabled through substack convert kit anywhere But now with Stripe offering all of these new crypto features, these traditionally Web 2 business models actually have an opportunity to now integrate with more Web 3 features, which becomes more inclusive. You know, you're going to capture more customers. There's new growth opportunities, new levers, all of this stuff that suddenly becomes open. So I think it's a really interesting step forward. It's also just an example of Stripe being just maniacal in terms of their execution.

Like what they rolled out here in one fell swoop was super. super impressive. And I think there's more to come on that same bankless podcast. When they talked about it, they were saying that they tried to get the head of Stripe Crypto to come on the show. And he or she delayed it because they said there was more coming. And so they wanted to come on the show after that all got rolled out. So I thought it was super interesting and clearly more to come from them on it. Yeah. When I think of Stripe, I think of just like flawless product execution. Like everything about about them is just like so well done. You go to their website, you go to Stripe Atlas,

like the, you know, the animations are amazing. So you just know that if they're coming out with a product, it's going to be amazing. They feel kind of like the Apple of payments. Yeah. When I think of PayPal, I think of like Old Guard, clunkies, earnerface, 90s.

And on PayPal, you can send, you know, buy and buy crypto, right? And send crypto. So it was kind of wild that PayPal was, quote unquote ahead of of stripe in 2019 or 2020 when they launched it. That's a great analogy too because I do think like everyone's heard of the PayPal mafia. You know, you had like Elon Maas, Peter Thiel, all these guys that that came out of PayPal. I think the Stripe Mafia is probably like the today equivalent of that.

If you look 10 years into the future, stripe engineers that leave and are starting their next thing, you're lucky if you can get in under like a 50 post money valuation. into those companies because they are in such high demand because that system is just breeding this unbelievable product design, product management focus, driving things forward. And this is an example of that executing. So that's a great one. Super excited to see what comes from them. Let's, before we run out of time before Ryan gets on here, let's talk about Yuga and Larva Labs.

Yeah, I mean, that was an empty acquisition. That was huge. Yeah. I think, like, it was huge on so many levels. Like, the fact that the two, you know, behemots in this space became one overnight was just, is just so big. And there's just so many downstream effects of that happening. Like, people didn't know what was going to happen. And still people don't know what's going to happen.

And just to set the stage on it, Ugo Labs is the creator of Board ABI Club, which I think they minted originally in, like, what, March 2021 or April 2021. March, yeah. April 1st, actually, something like that, yeah. Okay, okay. And it was, you know, it was a big deal at the time. People that were real observers of the space realized there was something different that they were doing. It was kind of one of the first, like, of the 2021 rush of PFP projects and like something

different that kind of got you unique access, community, etc. Ugo Labs then had this like slew of value that was created for the initial kind of mentors and owners of board api club. I saw a tweet yesterday that just said if you bought and hold a single board ape from that initial mint, which was 0.08, eth, $230 at the time. You would have gotten one ape, which is now a floor of 93th, $263,000. One mutant tape, because that was the spinoff project, you got access. that's a floor of 19 eath, one kennel club ape, which is 7.2, eth. And now the ape coin that they airdrop to all ape owners, you would have gotten 13,848 ape coins, which is worth around $200,000.

So the $230 initial mint to get the first board ape that you got would now be worth well north of $500,000. And that's the worst case scenario, right? That is the floor. The floor. So it's totally possible that you meant something rare. and it's like a gold date and you're sitting on $2 million. This has to go down, by the way, is one of my worst investment misses of my life at this point now that I'm looking at it because I had friends who talked to.

I don't think I would have gotten in the initial mint, but I could have bought one at like, you know, I don't know, probably one Eth realistically at the time. I think you talked about it. I shared it in a new chat. Yeah, and I just, at the time, I didn't know what an NFT was. I didn't have time to think about it, but completely whiffed. So I'm pretty embarrassed looking at it. But the point with this acquisition that was interesting beyond just, you know, this incredible growth of the board ape ecosystem was, I think this IP thing, which we've discussed in the past in the context of Disney and old world versus new world. And there's a little bit of that happening here.

Yuga Labs has been from a commercial standpoint, much more open with the IP. So any board ape owner, if you own a board ape, you actually own the commercial. rights to that ape, meaning if you want to put your board ape in a TV show or in a movie or in some art, you own that and the value comes to you. You actually accrue the value that your board ape might create in that world. Cryptopunks, which was a Larva Labs product, didn't have that. The IP was still owned by Larva Labs. So if you owned a punk, which is really the first PFP, you know, an amazing PFP project, the commercial rights to that are actually still owned by Larva Labs. And so in this acquisition, the big deal I thought was that Yuga Labs acquired all of the IP from Larva Labs around both Cryptopunks and Mebits, another project, and then actually gave all the commercial rights to the holders of the punks, to the holders of those assets.

And so suddenly it was like you took this old world strategy, which is a little confusing to me that Cryptopunks had in the first place. And it actually just gets brought into the new world where everything is all of a sudden open and you own the commercial rights if you own a punk. I just want to comment on that piece, the end piece. The only thing that would have made that more badass would have been if they gave all punk holders CCO, which we've talked about in the pod before, public domain, where all of all of the punts are now in the public domain. And basically, if anyone wants to print a T-shirt with on it, they could. And that's not just to clarify.

So CCO is different from what Yuga Labs does, right? So like they, board apes are not CCO technically, right? Like I can't sell a t-shirt with your board ape on it right now. That's right. And that's why, and this isn't financial advice, but this is like why I'm so bullish on CCO. Like I actually think that like the next generation of big PFP projects

and big NFT projects are going to be CCO. So that's the one thing I would have changed. Yeah. Well, let me push back on you there because I think this is an interesting, actually, point of debate. So with CCO, I guess I totally agree with you that CCO is part of the future if the like brand level continues to benefit from it. So like if crypto punks went CCO and everyone's allowed to put punks on billboards and everywhere and it doesn't matter. It's public domain. You can use it in artwork, etc. The broader punk ecosystem, I I think benefits from it. But my punk that I own, I'm not actually getting any value from that. Maybe I am indirectly, I suppose, through the like ecosystem growing. But my punk, someone's just using it and showing it everywhere. So like the provenance, I feel like might get diluted in my mind versus what this is,

which is like I can commercially sell and use my individual punk. And so if I want to go get T-shirts made and sell them with my punk on it, I have the right to do that. But at the broader level, no one else can use it. So I guess I'm wrestling with like it's a broader, it's a broader play and a broader perspective on what kind of value expansion and value looks like in this CCO world. When people explain NFTs to people who don't get NFTs, the example that most people use is the Mona Lisa example.

And I think you've used that example in the past where you say, Like, you know, yes, I can go and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and I can go print a print of it and put it on my wall, but there's only one Mona Lisa in Louvre in Paris, France. It's the bullish case for CCO says a very similar thing, which is you can go and print as many crypto punks. Let's say it is CCO. You can go and print it everywhere. And the idea is that the more people, the more people see the meme, the better and the better. it is and the value accrues to the whole project that as a whole very much so um that's actually great i'm changing my mind on it in real time as you're explaining it actually because um

if you say that like being part of this community so so say it's bored apes um being part of this community has value uh right now you know maybe there's 10 million people in the world i don't know pick up a number that that understand board apes and the value of it and You go CCO with it. Suddenly, board apes are in movies. There's a comic show. There's content being created around it. There's billboards.

There's events, whatever. You actually owning one and having the provenance of the single one that you own still gets you access to that community. But suddenly that community has a lot more prestige around it because it's everywhere. Everyone is seeing the logos, the images, all of the pictures all over the world. And so suddenly, you being a part of that community actually has more value than before because it's being so broadly memed and disseminated. So that actually is starting to click for me a little bit more.

Yeah. So to use that analogy of like the Bored Apes movie, for example, like maybe it's, yeah, anyone can go and create a board, board apes movie, but there's incentives for the people creating, let's say it's, you know, Mr. Tarantino who wants to go and create a Bored Ape movie. I don't know if you would, but let's just say he would. and he has incentive to go work with the board ape community to get them involved because they have all the culture and buying and stuff like that. So maybe every board ape holder is an executive producer of that film. Yeah.

It's starting to click for me a lot more. It also kind of continues to speak to me about what we talked about with Gary V on the show and he was on, I don't know when that was two months ago, about how most NFT projects are going to go to zero. and that there's a lot of downside pressure and all of them. And it sort of makes sense, right? Like 99% of movies go nowhere and make no money. 99% of songs get zero listens, right? Like the top 0.01% of singers on Spotify actually get any meaningful revenue from it.

And so I just think that's kind of the same, right? Like it's the analog here is that 99% of these art projects are going to be worth nothing and zero. And that's fine. There's actually nothing wrong with that. But for these ones that end up being the premium, you know, premiere. projects, there's going to be massive, massive value created in the same way that, like, you know, there were probably a million things that were created at the same time as Star Wars, but only one of them ended up being Star Wars and George Lucas is a billionaire because of it.

So that's kind of how I'm starting to think about this space as I've like personally wrestled with it over time. Well, I'm glad you're coming along a little bit there. I don't necessarily, sorry, just to add one more point. That doesn't necessarily make me like an investor in the space because it speaks to the point that like I don't really understand what makes these projects, you know, winners versus not. I rely on smart friends. Like if you send a thing again and you say, hey, this looks really interesting. It's an interesting project.

I'm probably going to go like buy one of those things because I'm not doing the board ape thing again. And actually that did happen with like cryptodes that you tipped me off to that I ended up making some money on, not this kind of money. But that's an example of it for sure. And that's a great example because Cryptoads is CCO. And one of the reasons you were seeing it everywhere was because it is CCO. Ah, interesting. Yeah. So it all comes full circle.

The last thing on the board apes thing and the, you know, Uga Lab thing, I think, or sorry, the Ugo Lapsing and Larva Labs thing is, you know, this is going to, you know, go down as like the Google, you know, buying YouTube moment. or the Facebook buying Instagram moment, you know, it's just going to be such a pivotal time in NFT history. And I think that also coincided with the leaking of, I don't know if you saw, but they leaked or someone leaked the Ugo Labs fundraising deck. It's like 90s. Which I encourage everyone to go check out.

And it basically outlines what their whole strategy is, what they're going to do with ape coin, which is what they dropped, which is the in-game currency, what they're going to do with virtual land, they're going to sell like a cup, you know, I forget how many, the thousands of virtual land pieces and what their profit margin is, which is something crazy, like 98% profit margin. Fascinating. I got to pull this up. We should add it to the show notes when this drops. Super, super interesting. I think we've got to run. in the waiting room. So let's bring him in and dive into more of this stuff.

There he is. What up, guys? What's up? How are you doing? How are you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. How about yourself? Doing great. We just had a full conversation with your chair. That was a lot of fun, actually. Oh, sorry. Hi. Yeah. I was, I'm like, all right, they're not here yet. So I'll go get some shit done real quick.

I'm just giving you shit. It was funny. I got to throw in a good dad joke. The chair's more exciting than me. So hopefully you're ready for this. Yeah, I'd push back against that. We'll find out, though, I guess. Yeah, yeah. If this ever gets uploaded, we'll know real quick. 93% of your life has spent indoors.

But so many of our best moments are outdoors. That's why I'm so excited to share with you Outer. Outer makes the world's most beautiful, comfortable, and durable outdoor furniture. When I moved to New York last year and got a new place, one of my priorities was finding an outdoor workspace. Outer's products have provided me with that game-changing experience. I now have outdoor furniture that's durable, that has modular designs. It has life-proof material that withstands the weather and the fluctuations that New York often brings.

They have a patented built-in outer shell cover to keep your furniture dry from rain and dew. It's the How Did No One Think of This Before product for me on the outdoor furniture front. I've absolutely loved it, and I know you will too. See the difference at liveouter.com slash room. And now through May 1st, you'll get $300 off plus free shipping. Again, that's live outer o-u-t-e-r.com slash room and get $300 off plus free shipping, only available to our podcast listeners. You're going to absolutely love it.

Interested in investing in commercial real estate, but not sure where to start? Me too. Well, Lex has created a new way for you to invest in real estate. Lex turns individual buildings into public stocks via IPO, so you can invest, trade, and manage your own portfolio of high-quality commercial real estate. Any U.S. investor can open a Lex account, browse opportunities in various asset classes such as multifamily and office buildings, and buy shares of these individual buildings.

Lex opens up direct and tax advantage ownership in an asset class that has previously been inaccessible to most investors. Get started today and explore Lex's live assets in New York City and an upcoming IPO in Seattle. Sign up for free at Lex dash markets.com slash room and get a $50 bonus when you deposit at least $500. Well, appreciate you coming on, man. This is a long time coming. Super, super excited to have the discussion and, you know, have a lot we wanted to dig into with you. Would love to do. just start with, you know, you are someone who, if I track your career and some of the things you've done, it strikes me that you've consistently been out in front and kind of on the

frontier of things. You've like been one of these people that has, you're going to call it luck, but like this special ability to see into the future. And I think the first iteration of that was with, you know, your role at Google and YouTube and gaming and kind of e-sports streaming. It wasn't really a thing when you joined. So I'd love to just hear about like what called you to that. How did you land there? And what were some of the things you saw happening that led to you making that jump? Do you want to rather long-winded explanation to some of that, provide context back?

Yeah. As long as you as you see fit. I love it. Okay. So what happened for me was I was put, when I was in high school, I played Counterstrike competitively. And I really liked that. And I wasn't really good at. it but I was still playing in like tournaments and really going down that that rabbit hole and that was

very early days. So this is let's say 2002, three, right? Like very early. Counterstrike was kind of still in its infancy, but half life had taken off. The mods had taken off. I also played baseball in high school. So I had this huge like deep love for sports competitively. Yes, love that. And gaming, right? And so I was like, wow, e-sports like this is a cool world. I'm like, it's kind of all the stuff that I love that intertwine. And so after the introduction of that, I kind of like always became very enamored with, with, you know,

games being played at a higher level. When I was in college, yeah, go ahead. Can we just talk about that moment for a little bit? So I confess as well, I was a Counterstrike, you know, esports player. I participated in the World Cyber Games in 2004. Oh, nice.

Yes. and I, you know, played Cal Premier. Do you remember that? Yes. Yes, the CPL Cal Days were the best. They're the best, right? So I know 99.9% of our listeners don't know what we're talking about, but I want to talk about e-sports back then and how Wild West it was.

And how, you know, because how I got into communities and Internet communities was through, you know, IRC, you know, websites like GotFrag. internet communities like that. So I think, like, tell that story because no one, you know, no one talks about it. No, that's funny, Greg. Like, it's even nostalgic, you even bringing things up, like some of those, like, sub-communities back then. Yeah, I mean, basically what happened for me, I got really into the different mods, like Team Fortress Classic and then Counter-Strike, and then just started searching where

people were coming together. And so the CPL, obviously that's where players were playing at the highest level, and I was not playing in that, right? And that's where some legends like, you know, fatality come from where the CPL and WCG were really big. And it was really the dawn of PC e-sports in the United States of America, right? Like you had already seen it, you know, happening with StarCraft and South Korea and so forth. So it was really kind of coming to Western English-speaking markets. And, you know, Counterstrike and Quake and a lot of these other big games are really starting to crack the surface here.

And so for me, I was like, this is so cool, right? Like, look at this. Like, people are filling out ballrooms. they're playing video games for money. I mean, it was just like, what a crazy experience. And so, you know, as like a 14, 15 year old, you know, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to be one of those guys one day, right? And so I, you know, you start in Cal, which was basically the Cyber Amateur League, this,

they already have this great system on like how you could kind of go through the funnel as a, you could be a terrible player and start in the Open League. Find your rhythm, find teams, find organizations, find community, right? And just find people that you want to play with and get along well. as same skill level. And then as you went through these tournament brackets, you could go into like Cali, which was invitational and so forth,

ultimately leading to like what the one, you know, the top 1% of the 1% which were the ones that were playing in the tournaments. So this is just my, like I got introduced to this whole world. You could watch the broadcast on Half Life TV, right? So they basically would allow you to kind of like queue up

as a spectator in the game and watch the game through the client, which was like, yeah, I mean, you're really starting to get into the like, oh, now you're broadcasting and watching other people. You'd have like 100 people fill a room and watch it. But it was just like, it was really, really cool times and cool experience. And you really saw the groundwork being laid for what the future inevitably would be of just watching people play video games. But it actually ironically started with the most hardcore niche part of what the gaming video industry is, which is hardcore competitive e-sports.

It actually represents a very, very small amount of the total percentage of gaming watch time when you think about it. But it is now the most premium in upper echelon. And so it gets a lot of praise. But yeah, I kind of went in that way. My take is like if you want to see the future, go to Silicon Valley. But if you want to see the future also, go check out what hardcore e-sports gamers are doing. Yeah, that's like my background. Yeah.

Silicon Valley is overrated now, man. going to Silicon Valley, I don't know, allows you to see the few. I think there's probably more of the future in like Discord servers than you can find actually on the ground in Silicon Valley these days. I think that's right. And I don't think that's a bad thing either. I think that's just like the natural maturation of Silicon Valley that now has become so big, right? You know, if you look at like 20 years past, right, you work there because it's on the cutting

edge. We don't know what the internet's going to look like. These are the companies that are pushing it forward. And they did, right? Like, you know, when I even joined YouTube, like eight years ago, was, you know, 500. million users is so big. That's a 2 billion plus now, right? And so you do get to a certain point where it's like, you know, I don't necessarily

know that big tech is or should be responsible for the next iteration of innovation, right? I think it will, I think it goes back full circle and belongs to the community, much like you think about how Silicon Valley started in a lot of ways. So I think it's an exciting part of the loop right now. Yeah, I agree with all that. I mean, I think like Bellaji, who we all know, and I'm sure have read, you know, his various writings or tweets or whatever it was. I think he was the first one I saw say that like the next Silicon Valley is going to be in the cloud. I thought that that was just like a very short,

punchy way of saying it that like, you know, opportunity is no longer geographically confined and it's been distributed. And a lot of technology now is following that same path, right? Where we're like a kid born wherever has the same access to things as someone born in Silicon Valley or you know, Palo Alto or wherever it is. So I agree with you that. I think it's a great thing. it more evenly spreads opportunity at a minimum. And at a maximum, it opens up a lot of collaboration that previously never existed as well. Yeah, I agree. Honestly, I think the best part about all of it is like the democratization of the tech because now everybody can get involved.

And I mean, I think that's like a fun part about being Polygon. Like, we're already so global. And the company started in India, right, and was able to get to the size that it did. And that's, you know, that's incredibly impressive. And now you see talent, you know, our teams are just. distributed globally. We're working remote and obviously we get to see each other at all these events because there's no shortage of crypto blockchain gaming events. But yeah, I agree. I think there's a lot of good in that. Can we actually talk about that Polygon founding story for a minute?

I read a thread that I found on Twitter recently about one of the founders, Jane Thee Canani. And it was, you know, this whole breakdown basically of like it was the son of a diamond factory worker in Gujarat, found an $11 billion crypto startup. It's a pretty amazing and inspiring story. And it's a great microcosm of exactly what you just said of like this global collaboration and the ability to interact with people all over the world and go build something. You know, like builders just being able to build and not being confined to your geography or to your set of circumstances. Any thoughts from like having now worked with this team or kind of takeaways from that that, you know, that have played through and how you're thinking about the future?

Oh, I mean, look, the founding team put a huge factor on joining Polygon. I mean, the biggest thing I could say is, like, I just really, you know, I kind of have always operated with a chip on my shoulder, sometimes warranted, sometimes like self-manufactured, but I always have loved working with people that have one, right? I think it's, it's fun. It brings out the competitive side in me. It brings out, like, I love being a part of the underdog in a lot of ways. And so what they were able to do with the conviction that they had against all odds and now be where they are today is just so impressive.

And I don't know how you can't wake up every day and work for Polygon and not be so inspired by what they've been able to do. A lot of people talk about what you do, you know, like what motivates you you wake up. I mean, that alone is enough, right, for me. And then there's probably a million other things I could add to that list too. So yeah, I love working with that team. and they were, I mean, honestly, it was a huge, huge driver for me joining Polygon. Have you ever heard the phrase, Josh Wolf is the first person that I saw say it, chips on shoulders, put chips in pockets.

I think that's such a good. It is good, though. Yeah, he says that. I've seen him say it in a few interviews. I'm always like, it rings so true. And so when you talk about it there, it's like exact. I mean, you even said for yourself, you had a chip on your shoulder. Can you actually talk about that?

You know, we had a quick and back and forth Twitter exchange, the three of us, before recording. And you mentioned, you know, some of the kind of blue collar upbringing. And, you know, maybe that that's part of the chip you feel like you have on your shoulder and that's driven you to succeed. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what motivates you? Yeah, and I don't even know if that's where the chip comes from. But yeah, I mean, look, I, I, uh, I was born in, uh, the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. Um, I, you know, my mom was a, my mom was a nurse. My mom was a delivery nurse, which later I'll tell you, was very helpful when we had a baby. But they got divorced when I was three years old. I was the youngest of three.

My dad ended up moving away a couple hours away. I didn't get to see him all that often growing up because he was in Columbus, which is like two and a half hours away from where we lived. And yeah, I mean, I had a, there's not a lot of shit to do in Ohio, right? So what you do when you're in Ohio is you play video games and you're a big sports fan, right? So unfortunately, I'm a diehard Cleveland Browns fan, Cavs fan and Indians now Guardians fan. That obviously hasn't, you know, there's been a couple of bright, moments, you know, since I was born in 86, but there's not a lot to, certainly not on the brown side. And so, yeah, I mean, I think like when I looked at there, I became like I told you very, you know, enamored with gaming and the interest in gaming. And so when you're in Cleveland, Ohio, there's not like video game opportunities out there. And so I just became really adamant on what I would need to do to create that opportunity for me. That took me through into college, right?

I was like, well, everybody's doing that, right? It's like, we're done with high school. we go to college and what do a lot of people in Ohio do? They go to Ohio State, right? That's like what we do, you know? So we traveled down, you know, and I went to Ohio State and really loved going, you know, being there, right? The energy of being on campus and, you know, the sports program being so big and how much that's important in Ohio was all awesome. And I had a blast there, but I was a terrible student, right? Because so much of my time was spent, you know, in the video game world and not just like playing video games by any stretch of imagination. It's like, how do I actually create this opportunity for myself, which is,

where I started to dabble in being a broadcaster and, you know, doing volunteer work for major league gaming while in college. And so that is actually where I think the chip started to get a manufacturer because everything always was kind of like, oh, I don't know, like that this is going to be a thing, you know, try telling people like, you know, all those years ago, what was the 16, 17 years ago, like, oh, people are going to want to watch people play video games. Sound insane, right? Like, truly sound insane. It's like people can't even sit still when someone has a controller in their hand, let alone you're going to actually think like a business is going to be built around this. And so I think that it's that doubt that kind of continued to happen, which is where I started to get,

you know, maybe a little bit stubborn and adamant where I'm like, I guarantee you there's other people out there like me. So ultimately, we went through the recession, right? You know, there's a huge, huge kind of, you know, kind of a recession that impacted a lot of jobs out of college right when I was in my junior going into senior year of college. So I had buddies that were older than me and they were moving back home with degrees, right? And like, you know, they didn't know what to do. And these, you know, like, look, they're, these would be really hireable people that just could not get a job because nobody was hiring.

Nobody knew what was going to happen. I mean, it was pretty scary times at the moment. And so I was basically doing a bunch of volunteer work for Major League Gaming and then, you know, and some paid work as well, like the commentating and running tournaments and all of that. And Machinima called. And so Machinima was this kind of like, you know, aspiring to be like the MTV of gaming. And they were a business built entirely on YouTube. And they only had about 10 or 11 employees.

This was kind of their aspiration. And they called and they were like, hey, you know, do you want to come work at Machinima and, you know, be a community manager? There's like a, we don't really know. Like there's a bunch of roles that need done. We just got, you know, our series A, like we're trying to hire some folks. And I was like, oh, you know, like, that's a dream job. But I have another quarter left of college, you know, so I can't do it. And they're like, oh, that's too bad.

Well, you know, let us know when you graduate. And like, if we have a job, like, maybe we can, you know, extend something. And I was kind of like, timeout. Hold on. The whole reason you go to college is to go work. Now I'm like, I have this dream job opportunity. I'm like in fucking Ohio. And now I can finally get out to Los Angeles, work at a job, work in the gaming industry.

And so I immediately was like, you know what? Like, I'm coming. I don't know how I'm going to land this conversation with my mom, but I'm like, I'm on my way. You know, so I'll make the move. And so dropped out and had to communicate that to my mom. But that's kind of how, that's maybe how a lot of that stuff started to begin. I'm like, okay. Like, you know, I really got to prove that I can do all of this and make a career out of this.

There's this great framework that you reminded me of while you were, while you were speaking there on, you know, what you said about, like, trying to convince people that gaming, e-sports was going to be a business and industry that, like, people were going to watch people in stadiums. All of that sounding completely fucking insane. Yes. At the time when you were trying to do it, there was a, I think it's Paul Graham has this. kind of framework that that I love, which is like if someone tells you something that sounds like a crazy idea, you ask two questions. One, are they a domain expert? Like, do they really know this domain? And then two, do you actually know them to be a pretty reasonable person? And if both of those answers are yes, then you should probably put some skin in the game on that idea because

it's highly likely to be like an asymmetric bet on the future. And this is such a perfect example of that. I feel like people told me that I knew we're really smart and I knew we're pretty reasonable that gaming in e-sports was going to be this huge industry. And I was like, that sounds crazy. I'm not going to get involved, whatever it is. But consistently, if you follow this framework, I think you end up with a bunch of really attractive asymmetric bets over time. So this is like yet another example of that kind of coming through. And that was really like, if you think about bets, that's the first life one I really had to make. Right.

you know, all this other stuff I had been doing, playing competitively, doing the commentating, all of that was so hedged because you're in school, right? So it's like, this doesn't matter. I'm like just, I'm tinkering. I'm discovering myself, my interest, where my passion is. This is the first time. It's like, this is a life decision that you're going to have to make and you alone are going to have to make this one.

And so it was the first time, you know, you're actually putting skin in the game, right? And it was equally terrifying and exciting at the same time. And I had a long drive from Ohio to California. to think through all of it on the travel out here. And I moved to Los Angeles. I'd never been here before, right? Like, I'd never been to L.A. in my life, and all of a sudden, I'm driving to go live there.

So it was pretty wild, yeah. What was the conversation with your mom like? How did that go? You know, my mom, she's Italian, so she's very animated and no shortage of candid opinions, right? I'll say that. She actually surprisingly was more supportive than I thought, because I kind of pitched it as like, here's the deal.

I only have a couple classes left. We're going to knock those things out. Like, don't worry about it. Of course I'm going to graduate. Of course I'm going to give my degree. It's like, but this is an opportunity. I'm going to go. And so I think because I kind of prefaced it that way, she was a little more supportive.

Obviously, I didn't go and get that degree or finish. But I think now she's okay with it. But yeah, not yet. You're on the honorary degree track now. That's what I'm going for. And I'm hoping that can like, you know, I can finally kind of come through. with my promise to my mom that I would I would get a degree. It just might be a little different than she thought. So she actually was, for me, I was, I was really nervous to tell her. Because look,

like, you know, we didn't have, we didn't, you know, we didn't want for anything, but we didn't have money. We definitely were always, like, very mindful of money, right? And so she definitely put money up towards my education and all of a sudden, and it's like, for what now, right? And so I was terrified, but she was pretty supportive. The one thing my mom was so good at always was harnessing the passion in the right direction. So it's like if you like video games and you want to work in video games, here's a couple options. Like you're going to have to learn how to make them.

But they also need people in marketing. They need people in finance. They need people in business. Right. So it's like you got to like you got to point your efforts this way. And so she did a really good job of always putting up like bumper rails for me to make sure that I stayed on the beaten path to kind of pursue that. So part of it was definitely like frustrated and annoyed.

But the other half, I think she was like really proud that. you know, that kind of came to fruition because she knew how hard I was trying to aim in that direction. So she took it pretty well. I think it's one of those funny things, too, about the education system. Like you went through three and, you know, two-thirds of your college degree. Yeah. And for some reason, you know, I think it's called the sheepskin effect. Like the reality is all that matters from a job standpoint is like actually getting the degree.

It's not actually the learning that people are valuing. Otherwise, you would get, you know, three quarters, seven-eighths, whatever of the value. you that you were supposed to get by doing that much of it. Really, all that matters is, like, staying long enough to get the little piece of paper that tells you that you're, like, a functioning member of society. And it's total bullshit, obviously. We all know that. But the sheepskin effect still is very real.

And it's cemented in our parents' minds. And so, like, that is viewed as dropping out versus, like, oh, he went and got seven-eighths or, you know, eight-nenths of the value that he was supposed to get. It's true. I think, and really, it's that first job only, right? Like, I mean, yes, every, you know, the jobs that I went to after did ask. But, you know, at that point, they're putting way more stake in job experience than that degree, right? And so, yeah, I mean, that was the other thing.

Like, while at Machinima, I got an offer, you know, from Twitch to go work there and stayed at Machinima. That probably wasn't, you know, in hindsight, maybe everything happens for a reason, but there might not have been the best decision financially at least. And so, like, once that started to happen, it further then moved me away from like, oh, I really don't need to go back, right? like now I'm getting calls to go work at other places that are great companies to work for. And so it then continued to further reduce that fear that I don't have one because you definitely move it. Like you certainly operate for a while in fear, not having one, right? Like, Machinima goes south, all of a sudden, I'm unemployed without a degree. Like, that doesn't sound great, you know?

So I was definitely nervous about that the first couple of years coming out here. It's such an interesting juxtaposition, like the three of us even on here, Greg and I have very different, experience sets with education and like what track we were kind of on. I, I, from a young age, just like I sort of, my dad was an academic. My dad's a professor. Um, you know, my mom is Indian and academics were very, very important. And I just remember like from a young age, I just knew, okay, what I was supposed to do was like, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to do four years. I should probably get a master's degree and then I'm going to go get a stable job and I'm just going to work in that. And like entrepreneurship was never on my mind. It was never something that I

kind of learned about or was around. Greg, you know, obviously you had a very different experience. Like you from a young age were doing entrepreneurial things, diving into it. College was not necessarily on your mind in the same way that it was for me. But it's really brave, Ryan, that you had that, like you sound like you were closer to my track. Like you were supposed to kind of do that like stable thing. And at a young age, you were brave enough to just take that leap and jump into something that you were passionate about and excited about. And it took me until I was 30 to do that and kind of have the courage to do something like that. And it's just,

it's just really interesting to see kind of when different people come to that realization of like being willing to take that leap into something new that they're really excited about. Yeah. And I don't even know like classifying it as brave. Like, because I kind of, you know,

for me, I think it felt pragmatic whether it was or not it might be another thing. But I was like, look, this is what. I'm like, boom, there's that opportunity.

I've been waiting for. I'm like, you know, like grabbing that, right? Like, been waiting for that. thing that door to open so for me it was like i'm out you know it was snowing like eight inches of snow out

uh in ohio it was december when i moved out i'm like i'm out of this place i'm gonna go work in gaming screw all of you who said that gaming wasn't ever going to be a thing like you all are living at home with your moms and parents and i'm on my way to los angeles like bye right so um i think it was actually more that chip on the shoulder speaking than any bravery but yes by the way Cleveland ohio i have to throw it in there is in my top five most underrated cities in America. It's gotten better over the years. I went there for a wedding like in November and it was cold. There's like the downtown area is all right there.

And like the stadiums right there. Marble room, the steakhouse like that place is awesome. There's some cool hotels. I was actually, I was blown away by Cleveland. It's total aside. But I feel like I have to throw some positivity because we're, well, I feel like we're sitting here crapping on, crapping on Cleveland. LA is super overrated, by the way.

LA is super overrated. I'm moving to San Diego. No, I actually like Cleveland. I love Cleveland will always be super near and dear. And I think they get too much black. You're right. Like downtown, they've done a great job. They put a ton of money in restoring that. And yeah, you have the, you have the calves are right there. The Browns are right on the water, right? So it is really cool. Yeah, cabs are right next to a progressive stadium. And so yeah, it's great. I love it there. I love going back there. I try to go back, you know, three or four times the year. My mom still lives there. So we have to get to the red pill moment. Yeah.

It seems inevitable on every Web 3 podcast. Yeah. It has to be a core part of your story now especially. But you were, you know, you rose through the ranks in your, in your prior career. You were a senior, senior executive at one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, running gaming at YouTube, huge deal, massive burgeoning industry. you and I had actually connected while you were in that role where you had chatted, you know, shared some deal flow, different things that were happening. And then I see this news. You put out this thread, which went super, super viral, you know, was all over the place. Greg and I shared it with each other when we chatted about getting you on the show.

So what was your like first or like your purple pill moment and then what drove you to the kind of full red pill, you know, decide to make this transition and join Polygon's duty? as a CEO. Yeah, it's a good question. I think I got, you know, taking a step back going about like when I joined YouTube as well, right? Like, I think I had this passion that, you know, gaming video was going to continue to be a big thing. That bet was starting, like, you were starting to see that now, right?

Like, you actually started to see product market fit and the idea that people would watch gaming video. So when I went to YouTube, I was really excited because a big thing I always want to be able to do is have like a high impact on things that I love doing, right? Like, that's at the end of the day, it's always been that. If you could just focus on how you have a high impact and an area where you're passionate about, a lot of things kind of just fall into place. Now, you could call that luck, hard work, persistent.

Some of it is probably all of those things, to be honest with you. But that is always where I focused on it. So it was never about job title. It was never about money. It literally is always that. I'm like, put me in a place where I can have high impact. And so when I came into YouTube, I was like, I can have a ton of impact here. They don't know anything about gaming.

It's this growing business. I have the opportunity to kind of set the strategy, hire everybody. I had definitely a little bit of imposter syndrome because I was like 27 years old coming in as a head of gaming. So that kind of, that was a motivating factor. It goes back to even the chip kind of conversation on the shoulder. And so every day there, you have people that, you know, some people get it, but some people are like, you know, this is ridiculous, right? Like, people watching people, like, is this what we want our company to be about? Like, do we even want to embrace it?

Why should we care about people watching it? watching people play video games, almost as if it was like the equivalent to cat videos and like hurting the overall brand and reputation, right? And so thankfully, Susan, our CEO at the time and still is, is like, no, this is like, what are you talking about? Right? Like, gaming is this huge, right? Like, we're going to focus on it. And so she was always such a huge advocate, but I had to do so much educating and evangelizing in those early years to get people to understand the opportunity. And so for me, what happened was like now segueing to actually answering your question. About a year ago, I started to start.

to see some, you know, people that I know that are developers from big prestigious studios and publishers, you know, ride games and Activision and EA. And they're like, oh, yeah, I leave him. I'm like, you're leaving. You're going to go do it. It's like, oh, start my own studios. It's like, oh, what's your game about? It's like, oh, it's a blockchain-based game. Like, what the fuck is that? You know? And so all of this entrepreneurial, like, spirit was being elevated because there was so much capital, really, for the first time in the gaming industry, right? There has never been this kind of capital being deployed to entrepreneurs in the history of gaming.

You've obviously seen publishers get involved with studios. And it wasn't like non-existent. And you have like Mitch Lasky and some legends that have definitely like paved the way. But this is like now you're talking billions of dollars because you've untapped gaming specific funds, consumer funds and like crypto-based funds. So it was like boom, this huge amount of money. So it's like if you're an entrepreneur or game developer, which is the untold story, really, that's of the shift because that happened like started happening a year ago.

All these people are like, oh yeah, I'm starting a new studio and starting like, you know, blockchain-based games. So I asked the question, I'm like, I don't know, like, what does that even mean? Because I had traded in and out of like Ethereum and Bitcoin and but has zero interest in Defi. And more just because of the like, oh, you should have some money in this and blah, blah, and put it aside from like smart friends, but never got into defy, never got into crypto, any of this. And so when I started to see some of these games come up and then people talk about, you know, like look, like we can have these free open thriving marketplaces.

And there's a lot of like, you know, equity in this digital ownership and like all of these kind of core concepts of blockchain based games. I personally just started spending time learning it, right? I'm like, oh, I'm the head of gaming at YouTube. Like, this cannot be a blind spot for me. I kind of was like thrown off. Like, I'm the guy that's supposed to know all the stuff happening in gaming, right? And so the further and further time I spent on that, I started then look at like, okay, advisory rules.

Like, how can I get in the space? How can I help facilitate all of this, you know, and where is YouTube's role in all this? What's my role in all of it? And as I started to pursue that, you would think that that actually satisfies the itch that you have, but it exasperates it 10x, right? So like poison ivy, when you start itching it too much and you're spreading it everywhere, it's like, that actually itching did not help. And all of a sudden, I was like, I got to get into this space full time. I have done what I've wanted to do at YouTube. Love the company, love the people I work with, have nothing but great things to say about that experience there.

But, you know, I'm 35. I had a ton of energy to go do something else and like still marry much a builder and was not really ready to do the like you know kind of uh vest and rest and coast you know for the next 10 years at google so i had to do something with this fire so there's a lot to unbegone like you could have done you know you could have the hard part about web three is that there's there's so many shiny objects that it's uh it's really it's it's hard to see when there's just so many shiny objects, right? So like, what made you go fully into polygon? And what was that process like? Yeah. So agree very much with the shiny object thing. So the what you want to do. So that was like the first thing I decided, too many shiny objects. So how do you actually hedge that is you work

a platform? You go very, very broad, very horizontal, which is L2L1s would allow for that. Right. So then all of a sudden you're like, okay, my, my expertise is, is building out scaled teams, working with developers, focusing on how to go to market, all of this, right? Did it with gaming creators and then gaming developers. So I was like, where is that skill set most valuable? It's definitely on like the immutable Salata, Polygon, avalanche side, right? So now it's like you get familiar with kind of the different platforms

and what do you want to do there as far as, you know, making your next step, right? And so Polygon from, I'm like, Ethereum is here to stay, going to be here to stay. So I'm like, I'm going to start making that bet. okay, now let's look at that. Where would you want to be if you were working to help the developer ecosystem as it relates to Ethereum, and Polygon kind of came into the fold here. And then obviously having that broad visibility across all these, you know,

gaming, fashion, entertainment, sports, news, right? You see all kind of what appears as shiny objects, and they probably aren't or may not be. Or when you see a lot of things that are not appearing in shiny projects, that could probably be like the next Minecraft, right? And so it was fun to say, okay, that's the kind of visibility that I'm looking for across the industry. It gives me a lot of reps. It gives me a lot of exposure to see a lot of different people and try to help as many people. And it has the highest level of impact that you can

possibly have on this. Right. So it was the impact role. It was the broad visibility and kind of working for a platform. And then it was the founding team that really sold it for me. So it was a combination of all those things. But that that's a little bit of like how the criteria kind of rolled out. And I wasn't necessarily fully certain, Greg, that I was going to make a move. Right. I was like, I'm going to go explore this. But you're leaving, I think how to gaming at YouTube is like one of the coolest jobs in the gaming industry, right? So this is a big, this is a big decision on leaving that. Yeah.

And how, I mean, when you think about the studios role relative to the broader, like how does studios interact with the mothership at Polygon? So if you think of what studios, it's basically a conduit for helping developers on board and sustain success on Polygon that are Web 2, Web 3, and it excludes DFI exchange wallet. Right. So that's part of the overall kind of macro tech. So if you're building an NFT project or a marketplace or you're figuring out how to enter Web3, you'll come through studios. So our partners are everything from like the usual hitters of, you know, Zed Run and crypto unicorns and OpenC. But now it also is, you know, draft kings and NFL and ticket master and AP News and so forth. And obviously Web 2 companies who are inevitably entering the space as well. Got it. So you're kind of like, I'm trying to think of like what an analog. is for it. Basically, we're like Devrel for Polygon. Yeah. Okay, got it. You're like the connective tissue that kind of brings other things into the Polygon

universe, developer ecosystem, all of that, and kind of promotes and fosters the broader growth of the Polygon ecosystem. That's right. It's so much of it right now is onboarding. You know, it's like people with this huge intrigue to build on-chain apps. And so like a lot of is that. But long term, you need to set the company up to be able to handle these partners that are on three or four years.

And how do they think about go-to-market with the creator economy? How are they thinking, about, you know, tokenomics. How are they thinking about, you know, when they start to be in the wall, how can we help them get out of it and provide them feedback and analytics and data? Just ongoing, like, customer success of developers, if you will. And so right now, you're looking at like 7 to 8,000 daps on Polygon. Like, you've got to be ready for 80,000, 800,000, and 8 million over the next 5 to 10 years. All of that sets up now, right? Because if you really think about it, these great, like, so if you look at games today, you know, their financialization first,

they're pretty rudimentary on the game side. Like, obviously, those are the easiest games you can get out to market really quick. But if you look at these games that will actually create a material inflection in Web 3, and blockchain in general will be these like high-polished AAA-type games that are going to take three or four years to make, right? So I'm obviously not betting on Web 3 in blockchain games based off of what the available offering is today, but like what I've seen in the games that are coming that are on the horizon. And you've got to build a system in place to support that long-term.

Too many things that I'm seeing right now are like, oh, let's get this partnership. Oh, go build a polygots like next up, right? And that's fine. Like that's how the whole, that's how all the L1s and L2s that are focusing on this or doing it, we cannot operate like that long term. And we need to make sure that people find like long term success and real partnership. Could you talk a little bit about some of the games or applications that, uh, you think are doing a really good job?

Let's talk about games for a second because I, you know, there's a lot of people who, look at blockchain gaming and they're very bearish and they don't believe in it. I'm bullish on it. You know, you mentioned, you know, crypto unicorns. I would argue that that's a, you know, pretty good execution around a game. Maybe you can talk about crypto unicorns what that is and why you think it might be interesting. I think so yeah, I'll take us, there's a couple of questions in there. I think the one thing to look at in this is oftentimes a mistake I see across very particularly like the gaming industry and gaming conversations is there's three billion gamers, right?

So we have to have a tremendous amount of nuance when we're talking here. Just to be like blockchain games and how they work today is super, super dismissive because it actually is working for some areas of the world and some gamers, right? And really what you're doing is right now the aperture of offering is very narrow to that three billion gamers on what's out there today and these play to earn games. That is going to continue to get bigger over time as people are developing different types of games where they're not, maybe they're not necessarily. necessarily play to earn. They're just a really high polished tactical shooter that looks like

Valor and a counterstrike that actually just has a free, open, thriving marketplace that allows for art to be developed in different skins. So like some artists can come up and be like, you want to do an AK-47 skin. Here, you can drop a thousand out of T's with these dimensions and it's a cosmetic item only and you kind of do that and like celebrate the artist and you own that. And so there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all. Blockchain games is going to serve a significant, in size of the total gaming audience, but not all of it, right? And nor I would say a lot of games have no business being a blockchain-based game. No interest.

Doesn't do anything for it. Not helpful. Not helpful. And so we just need to be really mindful when we talk about games in general. It's very much like if you try to talk about music and you were like, tell me, you know, tell me about that artist Drake and hip-hop, right? And being very dismissive of everything. So that's what I'm trying to take a step back from because even in these kinds of

conversations on Twitter where it's just so polarizing. It's like people like get get NFTs out of my game. Like we don't want it. There's no place for it here. Right. And I'm like, I think everyone's just talking past each other one. And then I think we're talking about different time frames and time horizon. Like I joined, like I said, you know, for games that are going to be three or four years out. And it would be fun to work with all these games over the next couple of years. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you raise it right there. But like I've definitely noticed as kind of, you know, I'm sort of an outsider to all of this. I think Greg is much more native to it than me. I'm kind of a curious observer, I would say, like not fully red-pilled on all of it and, you know, try to kind of take a balanced view still because I haven't fully, you know, kind of

dived into the space, I wouldn't say. But one of the things that struck me with gaming in particular has been like the animosity that a lot of the core gaming community has around NFTs in particular play to earn some of these things. And it's just been interesting to me to see because so much of it feels core to what gaming is and kind of a logical extension of it. But you have this like core community that's pushing back against it. And so I've just personally found it interesting to to see that and experience it. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things to consider there. I actually think some of the outrage towards it is warranted and valid, right? Because I think if you look at it and you're not well versed on it, and you're like, okay, I'm open minded. Tell me, tell me like what's out there that

I'm not being mindful of. You're like, oh, Oh, okay. Well, we have these like JPEG monkeys that are selling for a million bucks. We have this game called Axi Infinity that, you know, it's like a lot of people do enjoy it. But if you're like, if you're thinking about a lot of this like argument of like polished, so like this is not a game that I would play. And so and then they have obviously there is carbon footprint issues. Yes, that stuff is changing over time, but it hasn't yet. So if you look at it, you're kind of like, the fuck are you really selling me out, right?

Like I don't want any of this stuff. I don't want like to see my game turn into like this financialization first thing. I don't want it to see in order to. buy a digital item, I have to spend 800 bucks in order to get into the game. I don't care about these JPEGs that are, you know, subjectively not great art that are selling, right? And so they don't get it, right? It's like, and it's, and what they do get isn't exciting to them. And that's like totally cool, right? I would say the product offering that we have out in market for gamers right now is pretty underwhelming, right? It's like, here's version 0.5. And that's okay. You got to

start somewhere. All of these companies are great first movers. They're going to continue to build and iterate, they're going to continue to learn. Look at like Axi's done a great job of that as well, right? Their success actually really caused market issues for them, and they're learning how, like, how do we burn? Like, what kind of things do we do with the games? How do we change the mechanics? How do we balance it? All of this will be great learning. So I just feel you've got to give it time, right? The backlash, I think is justifiable. I also think you had a lot of people in Web 3 in the crypto space that really weren't gaming, like, just like, you know, peddling like blockchain games should be the universe and the world and everything else.

And it's like maybe we like let now like more gaming thought leaders kind of try to like find the balance between all of this because both sides have really, really valid points. And we need nuanced conversation over timeframes and where we think this will wait. But yeah, I think there's there is not a blockchain game that is like totally hits my hardcore gaming. Right. When you release a tactical shooter that's on chain and I have this marketplace and all the things that I was just talking about, I'm going to be all over it. And I think that would be the real indication of success when you just play a game because

you love the game. And it just has this financialization part of it that you enjoy participating in. And a lot of that stuff is in the background because the on-ramps will be really easy. And all things consider, like think about using the same tactical shooter example, Valorant. I love it, right? If you want to play Valerant, you're buying basically riot points. Those riot points have a perceived value.

You buy those digital items. And now you'll start to add, well, now those right points actually is a fluctuating price, you know, instead of static. It's dynamic, which is cool, right? You can get in early. There's monetization opportunities for you there. Like now you actually own these digital items. You can resell them. You actually know how many there are, right?

You have different artists that are doing different things. So it's like it opens up a lot of possibilities that I think people will come around to in due time. Ryan, do you remember 2003 when Steam came? out. And Counterstrike moved from being you buy, you go to a store, you buy a disc, you put in your disc, you install it, you play the game to now you, you know, you go, you download this software. It's like in the cloud. What is this cloud thing? Do you remember the backlash that occurred? Yeah, I mean, because you still, first of all, you still had kids that were playing like on dial-up. So they were like, this is not even, this is like absolute bullshit, right? It's

going to take me six days. And first of all, you're migrating all of this stuff over to steam, right? So it created a lot of, yeah, that was kind of crazy. And then obviously there was still a lot of sense of ownership and pride of like, oh, you know, I own the disc, right? I bought these discs. I bought the CD. I have them, right? I can install it like that. You know, now I'm having to do these internet, you know, this internet platform instead of just being able to locally install. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, it's, you know, my play to earn take, which I don't know that we've talked about Greg in depth.

You know, my like having now spent a bunch of time around it is probably very similar to Ryan's, which is basically just that like play to earn in the absence of having a game that is engaging enough to play for free and to just play for fun becomes like it asymptotes towards becoming a Ponzi scheme. because if everyone is purely playing to like make money off of the game, I think then you're just relying on more and more users coming in to like pay the early users and those people need to get paid by the next people. So in the absence of like a highly engaging game that people are just playing because it's really fucking fun, you're going to have a really tough time making the model actually work.

At some point it's just like you're waiting for the fall because then everyone starts flooding out and it becomes this like downward vicious spiral. And so I agree with you. like we need, and I think actually there are people that are entering the market now that have very positive intentions around building this. There will be a financialization component, as you say, but it'll sit alongside beautiful, immersive, amazing gaming experiences that draw people in for any number of reasons. Yep.

And I think the thing that people don't really speak about is in like three or four years, because of how much capital has been injected into the game developer ecosystem, there's going to be so much optionality for gamers, right? Like, there will be so many different gaming experiences across Web 2 and Web 3. And that's great, right? So that's why I'm just so much more open. I'm like, what has happened that's so great about gaming is it went from being this very, very specifically targeted to like male teenagers, you know, to now offering something

for everybody, which is why you start to see billions in people's come in. There's still a lot more room to go on all of that. And there will, which is why then I think you start to talk about like Metaverse and digital worlds because now gaming is starting to like infiltrate all aspects of everyone's life where it's like, is it even video games, right? Like, are we just, these are just like now digital experiences that people are participating in. And so I think you basically get to a point where it's all encompassing globally. And so there's going to be a huge subset of people that are going to want to do these kind

of on-chain game experiences. And that's what it's all about. I just don't think we should. My big issue actually with all the NFT backlash isn't even the backlash because I think some of their points are well met. I just really hate the gatekeeping of the gaming category because it offers so much to so many people. And I don't know like why any of us have any right to stand on and be like, this has no place in gaming when it is technology.

Right. Like, okay, like you don't need, you don't need to participate in it. And yeah, I can see it. Like a lot of people just want to play video games and not worry about like seeing if their account value went from 800 bucks to 200 bucks because like the token price went down. And I totally get that right. That's why there's like God of War. And that's why those games will always be around, you know? So anyway, I digress.

No, that's great. And, you know, I know we're running up against the end of time and you're going to go catch a flight soon. So there's a question that we love to ask people, especially like you, who have consistently seen into the future and proven that you're good at it, that we like to close with, which is basically just like if you were to have a few predictions for the future or one prediction for the future, you know, five, 10 years out, what are you seeing? Like, what are you super excited about? about what do you think the future looks like? Yeah, it kind of is like eluding at that with the digital world. Like that's the big thing. I think you've got you've got young generations that grew up from day one on their

phone and very immersive digital experiences, right? And they're really just like those individuals don't think much of it. Like having, you know, playing with your friends in video games, like having your community be digital oriented, right? Like looking for those things. I don't, I think there's a lot. a stigma in previous generations. And so you don't see them kind of be able to wrap their head around worlds that look like this or are perceived like this. But that is really the reality of it.

And so I'm excited for that. I think the digital worlds that we're talking about will be everything from like what you know is video games into just like actual digital worlds where people like I would hate to be doing just this video call in five to eight years and we're just like still doing Zoom calls to have conversations. There's got to be more immersive ways for us to feel like we're getting together. And I'm adamant that, you know, with where like Unreal and the engines are going and the world is going and technology is going, we're going to see those worlds. And that will be much more fun to have those conversations in there, right? And so because of that, people will put more of an emphasis on their capital being deployed in digital worlds. And then you want that to feel

valid. You want that to feel justifiable and warranted. People like peacocking, they won't have a problem putting money in digital environments. Gamers get this really well. We just talked about how everybody's becoming basically a gamer, which means they understand these basic concepts. So I think all that's going to happen. I'm really excited for how big brands pivot into Web3 and digital, even if not Web3, just like their new digital strategy. Maybe that's like, maybe that's a little bit more of a subdued way of saying it instead of it always being, you know, the hyperbole of Web 3 in blockchain. But they'll have a new digital strategy and it would be their participation will be how you figure out how to be a part of all of these digital universes, you know, just like we have these

top platforms that take a bunch of people's time, you're going to have this new shift of top platforms that take people time and more immersive experiences. And we'll laugh at like phone apps as being like super rudimentary in 10 to 20 years. Like, oh my God, you like actually called, you know, you're a car service from like just a basic app with your address and like from your phone and people like my, you know, my kids are going to be like, oh my God, you're so old. So I, yeah, I'm excited for these kind of like transformative experiences. But it's important. You know, there's a lot of hype around Metaverse and Digital Worlds here. That's fine. Like we are, we should be very honest with ourselves that we are in like the first inning, if you will.

Like we got 10, 15, 20 years of this digital transformation and we are at the very beginning of it. And so I think it's tempering expectations like, you know, two years from now, we're going to all just be like, you know, it's not ready player one. And I think people need to understand too kind of what it's going to look like. So yeah, I'm excited about all of these digital worlds and then the behavior that people have and what is required from a technological standpoint for that. to be enabled that's by like polygon as well too so much yeah yeah i mean i'm just wondering if you had a chance to see well i'm sure you did i know you saw the uh board ape leaked deck um yeah their metaverse strategy um curious what your perspective is on on that project and where they're headed yeah i mean i'll probably like refrain from commenting specifically on that project

on that project, but I do like seeing projects that start with like profile picture NFTs actually start to materialize into something bigger. It's a different way of game development. And now a lot of people are getting rugged on that way, right? Like this idea of like, you know, we'll start with profile picture NFT arts. That has a bigger like mission. Honestly, 99% of those projects are going to be complete shit. But this is really cool to see a very reputable brand and company be like we actually got a long-term strategy here. And so I, in general, people that can build a, that way, although there'll be few and far in between, it's a very exciting new way to develop that we haven't seen before. There's a lot of the top-down or venture-funded initiatives like

you normally see. So I'm excited that that's like really coming together in a credible way. We were just, before you came on, we were just talking about this exact thing that like 99% Gary V came on the show a couple months ago and said this exact thing. Like 99% of NFT projects are going to go to shit and are going to be worth nothing. And the analog I have is like, 99% of songs that get released never get listened to. 99% of pieces of art never get seen or purchased or aren't worth anything. And so it's actually not surprising that 99% of like these NFT projects will be worth nothing. I think the difference was that it became like sort of this meme of like a cash grab during the particularly like summer fall of 2021 where there was a perception that there were a lot of people just throwing this out because it was like a free money run as fast as you can.

And now there are a lot of people that are going to be, you know, under pressure and pushed. But now I think a lot of that speculation and insanity that was around NFT has actually subsided. And what you do have is a lot of people like Yuga Labs in this case or whoever it is that really are trying to put together concrete long-term roadmaps of how they're extending from this like, you know, initial whatever funky PFP into something much more meaningful and and hopefully impactful from an IP perspective. No, totally. Like it's like the, you know, modern day gold rush. And then people just like, you can grab like a pickax and then like be rich, right? it's like not the case. You know, there was obviously first movers that benefited from it, right?

We're going to see a pullback. That's going to be great because it kind of gets the noise out there. It does, it does kind of, you know, create awareness around the community of what projects they should be associated with, what they shouldn't be, what success looks like, what it doesn't look like. Look, when you kind of go into this world where it's like you ask for a tremendous amount of freedom and blockchain environment, right? And so there's good and bad that comes with that.

The bad of that is you put money in and you very, very, much could lose all of it on bad calculated investments. And you know, you kind of make that an even bar for everybody, right? And that's the beauty of it. But it does come with consequences, you know, and that's that that's part of innovation, to be honest with you. Yeah. Well, I mean, for true believers, you know, when you're looking at investing in these spaces and you've done a lot of diligence and done your work, these pullbacks are the best thing in the world, right? You get to accumulate at lower prices. Like, we joked about it. You know, you, I think we had originally scheduled for you to come on like a couple months ago and then we we delayed and I remember messaging you and just saying

I was just going to buy until until you came on. I was going to buy Polygon some of the Maddic. And it's been great for me because I've been able to accumulate at lower prices. And I've obviously done a lot of diligence, not financial advice, say it outright. But, you know, for people that have done the work and dug in on these projects, when you get to accumulate at lower prices, just buying good things on sale. For sure. We want to make sure we're giving value to all Matic holders, so we'll keep doing that. Well, I'm bullish on you and really, really excited that we were able to have you on and have this discussion.

And I like betting on my smart friends. So this is an exciting opportunity for me to get to do so. And really excited to release this conversation and have more people hear it and learn from it. I love it. Thanks for all you both do for the community and the industry. Thanks for having me on. It was my pleasure. Thank you.

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