The Boston Blockchain Podcast EP.12| Zeeshan Sheikh

[Music] cubic Labs presents Boston blockchain week stepping into the future celebrating the creators innovators and heroes of blockchain and web3 I'm Mike Joshua from Mudhouse media reporting from Boston blockchain week 2022 presented by cubic Labs with me now is z co-founder and CEO of Taco welcome Z thank you give us a little uh background of what Taco is all about so Taco is building gamified Commerce for the Next Generation except these games aren't in the metaverse they're in real life so for example in the past the literal examples you could use is collecting passport stamps like you go to Disneyland you're going to ride you get a stamp or a cereal box you open it collect or a trinket so we take that but put it all on chain so why do we do it on chain uh because of interoperability so if you played a game with Nike you played a game with a different brand and somebody else wanted to build some kind of gamification experience on top of that you don't need anybody's permission you can build any game that excites your consumers and we think that's the future of what the next generation wants great so explain a little bit about uh your your mission here uh this week with Taco at Boston blockchain sure so I think part of it is education of what web3 can become I think in the past we've seen a lot of rug pulls we've seen people like selling nfts it's like the South Park underpad knobs problem you know seven nfts step three is make profit but what is Ashley step two and how do you actually like what is the middle layer of this and I think there's different applications of what you could use about three four there's a lot of like tokenization there's a lot of fractionalization that's going on but I think in in general when you think about anything that has caught on a lot of it is gamified like Commerce itself is gamified uh Starbucks has a pretty good gamification in like their stars and collecting stars and of course last week they announced the Odyssey program which is going to be even more gamification but what's really interesting about the gamification they talk about is that their metric is getting consumers to use their app more so it's not just I'm going to open up Starbucks to order coffee this is I'm going to open up Starbucks to play games with other people who order coffee and I think that's very interesting with what we're seeing with like the blend of the metaverse and maybe cyberpunk and what like for example my son he's 10. he spends his entire day on Roblox so if his consumer behavior is spending eight hours ten hours you know grinding away winning avatars and tokens in a game what's his experience going to be like when he actually goes and buys something five six years from now online or in person what kind of gamification is he expecting when he gets there so I think part of it is education part of it is sharing what we're doing and then in the in the panel we just had you know we shared how we've done it for a car wash you think of nfts and web3 and you don't think of car washes like nobody in a car wash wants an nft they're just there to get their car washed but we were able to take this car wash example and make it a very gamified experience where you're enticing the player to go to different car washes go up in different tiers and make it a fun thing for them to go up tears and win prizes and things like that let's talk a little bit about the importance of Boston blockchain week and events like it why is it so vital for like-minded people to come together so I moved to Boston 2014 and the take that I have on like blockchain and not just like maybe blockchain week but why Boston blockchain week what we saw the past two years is Silicon Valley and everybody moving to Miami and I still go to Miami once a month because that's where blockchain is like people think blockchain is decentralized no it's actually in Miami right there's where all the nfts are you could every like you know how uh here you'll see posters up on walls like about lost cats and people doing piano lessons over there you have QR codes because you can collect nfts just by scanning the QR code I realized that blockchain or nfts are going to make it mainstream when I was ordering a chicken sandwich at this restaurant in Miami and I heard the person next to me I asked like oh how like how good is this chicken sandwich and the guy's answer was it's super rare because nfts are super rare you know so when it's made it to like the lingo of you ordering a sandwich I was like all right either I'm in like the wrong kind of state and world and I've crossed over the middleware so this is actually happening right awesome what is the it's a it's a big question what is the future of blockchain technology look like uh in your eyes so I think what's really interesting about the future of blockchain technology is that it is going to be not at the Forefront it's going to be in the background I think it'll enable interoperability it'll enable marketplaces where you basically buy and exchange stuff because you have ownership of those assets it could be fractional asset it could be a reward it could be maybe Airline points it could be a hotel stay it could be a lounge pass blockchain itself won't be the Forefront it but it will be what unlocks everything and consumers won't care if it's web to rep3 what they'll care about is can I own it can I share it can I do whatever I want with it because that's what web3 and blockchain Promises fantastic uh Z anything going on at uh Taco that's new or what what are you excited about at Taco right now so what we're actually excited about is our customers um the car wash was the first one we actually went live with it got decent coverage on coindesk uh we're watching working with this brand called future kimonos they are the official partner for flow grappling which is Jiu Jitsu and everything about Jiu Jitsu they have the best merchandise out there so we're partnering with them to launch their game experiences this takes not just the black belts and the yellow bells and the white Bells it adds a layer of tokenization on top of that so not only do you shop for participation get the bills you also get these tiers and you go to different clubs basically doing the in real life experience and I think just look at this different customers with the different experiences and how they want to launch into web 3. is basically an education course so six months out a year out even if the entire web 3 Market dies we're having so much fun learning about what marketing psychology can bring to the table that we're basically learning more about that than what about 3 has to offer at the end result and how can people get in touch with Taco taco.xyz simple domain simple food everybody loves tacos awesome Z thank you so much thank you very much for more on Boston blockchain week go to bostonblockchainweek.com for more about cubic Labs go to cubiclabs.

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