EBC22 | The Creator Economy is Migrating to Web3

welcome uh we are talking about the creator economy is migrating to web3 which is very interesting because it's like it's a fact already so we only have to talk about the why and house and uh yeah let me introduce uh my other panelists we have mateo from meta we have sharif and i would like to do it like this in this cozy environment um we all say like one two or more sentences about ourselves in our company um guys you start first and then i go and yeah first thing first thank you for being here um sheriff i'm a digital artist and you know i've been creating uh digital products in you know for the past 10 years of my life i'm now currently in creating an animated show and you know animation studio in a game studio and i'm here i'm happy and excited to share the stage with these people you know anna matteo thank you for being here too and yeah here we go mattel i'll let you introduce yourself hi mateo here i'm an engineer manager in meta i work in building infrastructure for the family of apps and meta to bring web3 technology and web free user experiences to the meta developers thank you so much my name is anna graf i work as director nft for a gallery called kerny gallery and the marketplace that named miza.art so this is really like we have this whole process of bringing creators that had never been in the space before into the space and also adding additional artists from the digital art space to the fields that are already kind of native our claim has democratized the art world and i think this is why we're here sitting together how can we do this together best and my first question and that goes to you is who considers themselves as a creator please raise your hands creators come on cool well that's already something i mean this is why we are here in this web 3 space and uh beginning with this whole topic what would you say is web 3 what does it mean for you sharif because it's such a wide field of web 3 and i think many people struggle with what it really is or what it means so what is your definition yeah i mean in my opinion uh i've seen the web 2 revolution you know and i i lived it and i worked with it so you know in general the likes share comment you know all of those interactions uh it's you know one of my other main businesses is digital marketing you know and creation of content so uh i've seen that happening and i when i started you know seeing a change that was ongoing uh what people right now called web3 um it's basically understood that the way um we were interacting with this world with this environment was changing and you know when people says that web3 is really bringing back the powers in into creator sense it's it's really true and i really believe uh it's it's what's happening right now uh at the same time i'm used to create content and to build for others artists labels you know publishing companies et cetera et cetera uh but now i'm building for myself and i think that the technology that you know the web3 uh is bringing to the table is what is giving us this opportunity um you know also companies like yours of course you know we're also developing you know metaverse games and it's all oculus based uh i think this is a big change and and you know like being a part of it uh you know at first from a web 2 point of view and learning what was happening and embracing it i think this this is a major change that's going to literally shift the power into you know who's actually creating and not you know mainly companies that just take advantage of creators you know i think this is a really important thing what i really love about what you said right now is that you can be both yes you can be a creator and have a company and it's all getting more and more interconnected and now i want to hear from you mateo what does web3 mean for mata and how do you embrace this whole movement so i see the web 3 as so first of all a set of new technologies at the base of it there's clearly the blockchain and also a community of developers entrepreneurs creators they're bringing basically property rights via this new technology to applications and services do think there's going to be we do believe that meta there's going to be a shift where web 2 was more the power to the platform now that we clearly see the path towards giving some of that power back to their creators um for me i would always say in one sentence web 3 is internet of values and i think this is what we really bring together here i also think it's an interesting panel having somebody who's really building an nft project right now connecting influencers and everything i have talked to mata already a lot because of course we need the creators on that side there i come in kind of with the artists that we bring and we see that there are totally new and different uh connections being made and and this is really what i see as the extension also of um web 2 to transforming into web 3. now from the creator side um what would you say because we we talked about is migrating already um how many creators really see these opportunities at the moment and and how do they enter this the space how do they approach you i'll give you a brief example of something that i lived personally my co-founder is a grammy-awarded music producer i've been in that field for a while and i'm seeing a big change happening in that in that space too you know when usually when you're a music producer or a songwriter uh you usually don't own anything anymore you know you you give everything away in order for the song to be you know aaa artist number one billboard etc etc so ownership for us was always a thing you know and uh while i was creating content for this artists uh i realized quickly that uh you know uh something needed to change and this is what web 3 is bringing and the reason i'm i just give this example is because again we have grammy awarded people that right now are looking into this technology to understand how they can apply this technology not just to their business but also to their passion which you know in this case is is the music fields and i i'm giving this example because again i lived it and i saw it happening and when we started our project in 2018 um we knew that you know ownership was an issue but we didn't have the solution so once we saw that something was changing and of course adoption was a thing because you know that the first thing and the most important thing for technologies to be adopted we came out with this and i'm seeing as i told you i also work with influencers influencers music producers songwriters artists painters all of these people are coming into the web 3 you know word and taking a look to understand what's going on we don't know yet but do you feel that there's still hesitant because it's so interesting what you say with the digital artist like 10 years ago it was like you had an usb stick and then you got a paper certificate so this was how you proved the ownership it was super super complicated and i think this is also a reason why digital art is still in the traditional art world kind of seen as something ha we don't really know and and this is such an opportunity and i really want to hear from you too how are creators dealing with that now at mata how do you help them uh understand and access the space so amita we believe that the web3 gives creators the opportunity to establish first of all a more direct a personalized connection with their audience and we also see new opportunities for the creator to monetize their ip and their content we see that one of the challenge that today the web 3 has is is the lack of users so we like you know what one of the the contribution that we're focused on is like how can we bring more mainstream users into the web3 and we believe that this is going to benefit quite a bit the creators giving them you know more power in their in the distribution of their ips their content and new and different ways to monetize that content and what do you see as the biggest hurdle why this is not yet adopted in the mass market so i think today we're used to these very slick user interfaces where used to these amazing flows in web 2 that have been kind of fine-tuned for years so web 3 is new so there is a new interaction paradigm via wallet and this is poses a new challenge but i don't think i think we shouldn't forget that this is it's very recent it's very new we're still in a very early stage uh so i believe that some of the most smart people in the world are working on these problems so in the next few years probably we'll see wallets becoming so much more accessible and the user flows are going to be much smoother so simplifying assets to [Music] web3 via easier uh user interface i think it's going to be uh is today the the biggest challenge and i think this leads to the next question how centralized does web 3 still have to be to make it accessible to the masses because this is a question like many people ask yourself oh we don't need the third parties anymore now i work for gallery personally don't hate me but that's not what i think too don't hate me and i think all of us come from the side where we more see um how can we really bring value to the space and for me i always feel like this has to be an evolution so how is is is meta thinking about this process of being part of the centralized system but migrating to web3 so i believe the the centralization of web 2 was the consequences of some the architecture some of the structure right for bad or good we got very sleek user interface super fast you know services but there was a centralization that happened and this has happened in many levels so is centralization of technology centralization of economic power centralization of decision-making right so i think we have to start distinguishing what the web3 offers is the tools and the primitives so that we can depending on what service we are offering we can centralize or decentralize certain things the big thing is that data is getting decentralized right now so i i think that where in in the near future you know if you have a bunch of followers on instagram or twitter you probably are going to be able to export that through whatever platform you want similar to what uni swap does today uh uni swap the core service runs on the on the ethereum anybody can go and build a new interface a new surface for the user to interact so um that's how we think and that's why for instance you know my team is spending countless hours to integrate with every possible blockchain so we're very open to the ecosystem we want to work within the ecosystem we want to work for the ecosystem so i think in the in the in the short term they're going to be some probably pocket of decentralization i think the key uh red flag to me is the people that are making decisions about their service how that is centralized or not i'm less concerned about the tech parts i'm more concerned about the governance and the economic power and you know if i pick an example like openc i believe that yes it is partially centralized they still have some data that is off chain but i do have to say that they just released a new protocol for doing market of nfts and that's open source and the data is on the chain so anybody can go and just build a new open c and if you build a better service then you're going to get the traction that you deserve that's interesting because many have tried like looks rare uh i don't know what is it it's a volume issue it's only marketing but yeah as you know the technology is pretty impressive how open source it's it's it is and how it's moving to that so i i think the key aspects at the end i think the summarizer of this is the take take rate so look at what you know a platform of the take rate is uh and for web 2 and web 3 and if you know the deck rate is like 2 percent 2.5 percent probably we're not in a fully decentralized system yeah probably that's that's yeah what i said earlier um i really believe that you know we're on the edge of a big change and a big transformation but at the same time we got to keep in mind that you know we're still living this world this reality um and that's why i really believe that web3 applications uh that understand this and and you know like you know you don't have to be a visionary too much that's what i always say you know if people tells me i'm a visionary probably there's something wrong so you know i i'm i'm a i'm a tech guy i'm a nerd guy and you know i've always been uh curious about this big changes you know and i really believe that on some aspects we still need centralization uh especially when you know when we talk about security safety uh because the web you know it's it's not safe we know this in general but uh the you know the users are so new to this word that i i really believe that for the good we need to have a little bit of control still until you know everybody you know i mean here we're probably you know the few percentage in the world that understands what's going on you know do we really understand i don't know i mean i i don't i don't and i think you know yeah we got to be humble enough to accept this uh and you know if i take in in consideration safety ex like especially for new users when you you know when you onboard new people to the platform i still think that we need uh you know a process to go through a process to have people understand what this this is all about and as mattel said like log in with your wallet which also means log in with your founds so you know like if if in web3 your email is at stake which is really it's a bad thing but when you log in with a wallet and you know you gotta take in in consideration a few more points you know yeah it's a lot about self-responsibility i think this is the thing and uh centralization for me when you put it in a good way is also trust and i think when we talk so having somebody to write a ticket to and have an answer you know i think that's important it means we need more trust and uh the well-known companies and this goes also for us as a gallery when you go to open c and you want to buy art digital arts you you get lost very very easily and this is the thing and not only the customers are asked for direction but also the artists and this is the most interesting part why i think that last year's like you say visionary i say maybe it was a bit too idealistic i'm also a very idolistic person but pragmatic and i think this is like the sweet spot where which leads to innovation and the process that really leads to something new um because we we can't just say these are the bad guys we are the good guys it's always the yeah it's it's you know it's also like to to talk about the tech side a little bit you know in general smart contracts everything that's you know full stake developing in general and all these web three different applications um it's so new that you know like my team is always you know on on the edge of creating something new and it's the same for all of the builders and that's why i believe that we still need a little bit of centralization and i'm a web 3 guy so i shouldn't say this but i really believe it's important because the technology is so new uh there's no antivirus that you just download and keep your wallet safe so we need we need support from big tech companies right now because they can offer the user base the the help they need to be on board it the right way and then you know of course time will tell us because again it's something new there's no guide you know there's no book that you just read about you know how you build a web3 brand or a web3 tech company but i really believe that you know we're start writing one maybe yeah i mean i don't think i don't think we're the right people right it's still maybe together we do this it's like again you know uh putting like forces together this is really interesting i also see like the first wikipedias for web 3 coming right now with all the terms so that we avoid people because at the moment how many people do really own nfts it's like 1.5 million maximum and trading is even less so um but i think meta has now already launched like the first project in the us and how exactly does it work can you tell us a little bit more about this yeah so we are testing what it's the experience is called digital collectibles this is we're testing uh this is with instagram and the old flow is based to for for artists for creators like sharif to showcase their nfts so this is the first of many tests that we are planning to run this year um and we're going to also give the opportunity to do that across you know instagram and facebook and this is our first step into the market our goal is to learn to learn from the web3 community to work with the ecosystem and to understand how we can best serve creators the experience is fairly easy if you have we work with third-party wallets like metamask rainbow wallet um you can authenticate yourself using the um the wallet actually you can prove that you uncertain ft by basically um like twitter many people know it from yeah so you can connect uh uh meta mask and versus if you have a crypto punk then you can actually uh showcase your crypto bank on on your stories on instagram or on your post and then the post will look uh will be marked as the digital collectibles and then we'll have a special uh uh ui treatment so that you yeah your followers should be able to recognize that it's it's a special post um yeah that's pretty much the experience today what blockchains are you working yeah so we work on with ethereum a polygon for now and then support for solana and flo is coming soon that's really interesting but yeah especially flow is super interesting to be honest because kind of from my journey we started on the flow chain for art might not have been the right decision but still it is a super fast blockchain and this is also something when we talk about adoption for the mass market and infrastructure if everything was done on ethereum right now i think we will stay with the 1.

5 million because it would just be too slow and whoever tried to board something like last year uh knows that the guest fees were like super super high and you didn't get into a project um is there anything this is something i would really like to know from you guys like all these during this hype last year it was really hard to get into projects how do i find my community you know um i really believe uh this is one of the main issues too it's hard when when something is you know this impactful you know and we can definitely uh see it from you know big uh newspapers forbes times uh you know all of this media companies too that were involved in this nft hype or this web 3 explosion right um i really believe that uh on on this side you know there's few things that you know are gonna change but um you know i really believe that the space was uh too small to fit everybody uh the technology was too you know it was too early you know we've seen so many uh mistakes people that locked over 20 30 million dollars in a smart contract and it's it's all because it's so new again um that i really believe that the big uh mistake was you know all that promotion all of that exposure without knowledge turned into a lot of you know frauds people that just created nft projects to drain liquidity out of the ecosystem and a lot of company based all of their you know structure on nfts which again i said in my in my experience you know i believe that nfts are a great technology uh to be implemented in a company but um i wouldn't base my company just on nft collection you know in our case we're doing an animated show and we have nft collection that allows you to enter the ecosystem but it's more of a collector thing you know and i really think that that's what it's all about um i think that again there was too many news around and and you know not enough knowledge for sure so people ended up on you know discord servers getting knowledge from random anonymous people and that's not the best you know but eventually you gotta learn you know and and uh we went through this phase with every new technology uh it's always like this uh it's it's all about you know getting the time to understand the technology uh and as you said how do i find my community in my opinion you know it's all about we're creating something it's a media franchise but you know just look for the things that you actually love and you know just don't don't base everything just on a quick speculation because when you're speculating so true this is so true especially for collectors you know this is also what i always say and you were talking about understanding the technology i don't really know whether everybody really has to understand the technology and this is why i also think that digital collectibles will lead to a better understanding than nfts because when i talk to like collectors from the traditional art space do they really want to know what an nft is or do they want to have this art piece of their favorite artist and just enjoy it have it in their wallet and also what what i feel is still lacking is the way how do we present the nfts um i was visiting so many galleries in new york right now during nft nyc and i still feel that there's a lot of opportunities for builders who can really do physical stuff where you can present your nfts because i think this is where it all comes back you don't want to live fully in the digital world i say maybe yet i don't know what matter versus will look like in 10 20 40 years i have no idea i myself i mean we're sitting here in a large round people inter acting with one another after covet or during covet whatever but i see that there's a lot of need also for people to go to the real world and we as as galleries and and also as companies who work in the space i think it's it's necessary to see how how we show collectors what nfts are and how they can enjoy it um someone was saying me like make them more emotional accessible and uh also what i have always seen the biggest hurdle for many people is oh my god i need crypto to buy an nft crypto um so but there are so many solutions right now i mean open c they came with moon pay for us misa dot art when you go there you have a shopify shop experience so you you don't need any crypto uh for the purchase you don't even need a wallet in the beginning so for us it's really about presenting art that people love presenting digital collectibles presenting music and you don't talk about mp3 you say music and for me this is what it comes down to uh when we're talking about creative economy migrating to web3 it's also like do we really need all these terms that we were using as nerds or web three guys or however you consider himself or can we make it more accessible through language and the design what you were talking about also and how do you see this now you said you were launching the first project and do you think it's a good start doing this in the during the bear market because you can learn a lot more so i'm not too concerned about the short-term um situation the current market started i think you know it's this what we're seeing today it's fairly normal when there's a new technology that comes to market and you know there's a new primitive to build new experiences and services uh people start experimenting there's gonna be obviously some hype uh nfts is particular because it makes big news when somebody buys 69 million dollars an nft but um and when you talk about displaying arts one one of the thing where we're experimenting with is using um our vr technology sparky are actually to offer a more much more immersive experience with your art and and make it available to your followers so i think it's an area that's very interesting to us and we're experimenting with it so i do believe that so i'm not concerned about the current situation we're focusing like on the long term and we're focused focused on really understanding how we can get to what i call you know an iphone experience which is most of us use an iphone we really don't have any idea how these things works all we know that when we need it we pull out the phone push a button and a car shows up five minutes later in front of you to take you whatever you want so that's what we're thinking you know our kind of north star and we're working every day to try to bring that to creators so they can make you know a better living by selling and doing what they love basically yeah and honestly just you know because i i want to connect to what mattel said about you know the the opportunity that this technology is bringing in general to artists so vr it's it's something really unique and for us builders like in our in our case right uh i i come here i sit in here and i explain you what we're building right it's you know you might be uh you know uh you your imagination might be strong enough to feel it right to understand but if i come here i say i give you an oculus you just actually see it you interact with it so this is another thing too um again i'm not concerned about short-term fluctuations i know for sure that uh you know if web 2 was a screen with keys that you interacted with and then you know we got touchscreen and we were like wow this is crazy right but if you think about it how hold it is how hold it is as a screen interface like a website how old it is how it looks like 1996 except his style better right but now you have a whole new experience which again you can showcase a sculpture you can showcase a painting you can have a you know a pitch presentation in an oculus and it's pretty different i can tell you for sure because we're used to this and the i mean oculus is pretty impressive we're also creating games right it's something that we would have never thought about because again you know we're building a you know cartoon universe but now we you want to feel are you our metaverse yeah this is your oculus enjoy you know and i think this is a big big change for artists even if you're a musician you know you put oculus you can attend concerts and it's pretty impressive i will say that it's it's a big big big change that excites me a lot honestly this new way of interacting with the world you know i i'm pretty impressed honestly so love the passion you're bringing in here by the way this is really amazing and um we wanted to open the stage for questions but before we go there um when you meet a creator that had no it has no idea about web 3 or whatever and asks you like how can i get in there what do you tell them uh it's it's pretty hard but at the same time i have quite a you know a few examples uh you know when it's music when it's art the first thing i i say of course is do you want to own what you create and of course they say yes and i'm like okay you don't right now so um i'll explain you okay and of course the knowledge around is it's you know little pieces here and there of of knowledge uh but you know like i really push them into understanding what's going on and you know not all of them are tech guys so as mattel said interfaces the the way to interact it's still a little bit too technical you know um and and you know once the you know big platforms will integrate you know a new sleek way new design a new interface where i can you know most of the people just want to click and interact with it you know without having to go on at ethers can interact with the smart contract you know like it's it's a lot of things for people to digest you know i think that this this is a big change and you know eventually we'll see in five years where we're gonna be you know uh mateo invest 200 to buy a first nfd that's a very very good thing experience so i think yeah so i think i mean it's the same thing i tell my engineers when they first joined the team is like invest you know a few hundred dollars money that uh you can afford to lose uh and then go buy an nft participate in you know with the community and then find a friend find somebody that you trust to take you through the experience and understand uh the pros and cons of a different solution that's this is the best thing it's so interesting that you say this because for our company what i did with the last project i said everyone gets this for free you just have to do the whole process and this was the moment when they didn't see me as an alien anymore i think because before i was like this nft lady oh it's kind of you know you come to this gallery it's very traditional artist it's this very very exclusive space and this goes for either side because i also had this artist he is a traditional painter and he gave me a call when i said you know what anna i want to do an nft i said cool that's nice uh how do you want to do this and he really had this idea he wanted something 3d and animated i said well can you do this like have you learned blender no no i haven't but i i appreciate your help so i get to my studio we did this nft and for him he told me later it was like opening a whole new experience he says that even when he goes back to painting he will never do it the same way as before because it has extended his whole website so much i have a little example one of my uh friends he take pictures of birds right um and you know it's not something so hyped all right you know it's not like i don't know how many of you guys would buy birds pictures you know but eventually i was like why don't you start a nft collection you know then eventually he started i was his first buyer of course uh but now he has a community a little community of people that are excited this is another thing too uh little niches uh you know like interest group of people you know we we lost this a little bit and i think it's coming back so we share some interest let's join a community together let's talk let's you know and this is bringing us back to you know being more human which is crazy you know let's give back to the creator because this is the thing what what i haven't talked about it royalties it has not existed before so the artist participates also in the secondary forever yes and and this is something like with the meme culture it was basically for free all the time and now people can participate and when people really love their content and i think this is what it all comes back to where we started when you love the content the creator should be honored for this and this is what we bring together here and now we have a few minutes left so is there a question in the audience feel free to uh don't be shy like okay overwhelmed no [Laughter] yeah there's a question do we have a mic uh i can bring it there no i think we have to kiss raise your hand again i think they don't see it do your mouth hi what's your name roman thanks for yeah sharing so many many insights earlier we heard that we can't expect infinite growth in a finite economy and here i'm using this example for like how do you want to or how do you imagine bridging an infinite digital world and limiting the it through um for example nfts so um where do you think there's a good combination of giving infinite potential and infinite opportunities but still like storing some of the concepts or ideas in limited accessories matteo how do you want to answer yeah of course you can go first so if i look back at the early days of the internet um i was in school back then and i remember hearing economic projection for the whole economy of the internet and i think the biggest one was like a billion dollars yeah now you're laughing i guess my point is like i don't know exactly what's gonna happen in the next uh two to five years but uh i think you know we're in a phase now with f3 that we are establishing new primitives new building blocks for experiences and applications that they're gonna come in the next few years i don't know how they're gonna turn out but i think i don't put uh i think it's gonna be overall that the gdp that's gonna come out of the weather it's gonna be bigger than what i'm pretty bullish on what we can imagine today um and so certainly it's not gonna be infinite but i think it's gonna be bigger than we think um yeah sorry if if you have something else to say i'll wait and then i'll answer but uh you know it's just a little answer real quick um yeah i mean you know quantum computers right that's one of the big things that you know it's probably we're gonna see in our lifespan um i think that uh every time that we have a technology we just uh really undervalued the next one until it's too big um and yeah i see what you're saying you know the space is limited how can you give you know space to this infinite grow it will eventually find a way and i'm pretty sure that you know as every company we also might one we might be one of those but we don't know let's see 98 of the companies will just simply disappear so the space will be freed simply because the way it you know it was being built was not right or you know many different things so um yeah there's a lot of of potential but i'm also pretty sure that as you know web 2 gave us a hundred big tech companies right that are now nasdaq listed uh it's gonna happen the same every time uh i don't think that we're gonna see uh millions of huge companies everywhere around the world and we're gonna live in a cyberpunk you know uh future but you know i'm pretty sure that a lot of things are going to change and a lot of things are going to disappear leaving the space for others to create i think it's always about shifts you know history when you look back as as matteo said it has already happened before maybe in with some other things but we can learn from that and there are always these waves when a new technology enters the space then there's the hype hype goes down but those who build they will still exist after many years and those are the one who who really lead the direction so but you had another additional i have to rephrase my question and i wasn't talking about the market size but more like when does it make sense to make something digital fin infinite as finite so like um using minecraft as a very example a basic example like um will all of the blocks be a nft or once it's assembled it's an nft or where do you see that that a good balance between there do you feel like it's getting too much no no like for for me it's um it's just um yeah like when does it make sense like once you have a purchaser or um you'll eventually find a purchaser this is the point but yeah i'm i agree with you like if you go on openc you'll probably find 246 million nfts you know and one is just a dissect frog that laughs you know and you're like what what am i looking at but eventually as i said it's it's also about you know like small niches you know and then group of people um i see like board ape right that's a big media franchise which was you know eventually uh you know the direction is mass adoption right okay we're creating a media franchise whatever but if you do ice sculptures trust me there's at least 5 000 people around the world that will eventually collect yours your thing and that are in love with ice sculptures so uh just have to find you and this is what you're talking about like in this panel how much centralization do we need so that we match we're kind of matchmakers in a way you know we match supply and demand this is what galleries have always been doing in the past as well and this is why more and more artists and creators are asking for this matchmaking process because there are these 5 000 people how do i find them what do i need to find them and and and then it all makes sense again for me it doesn't make sense to like oh yeah i'm in this picture why should i do this there is no need for that of course you should also be like balanced with resources this is very important when you always talk about this eco-friendliness yeah we can start with being eco-friendly by not minting anything uh that we do each day it might not be necessary yeah but if we find these niches as you said this is where it all this is what instagram showed us in the past you know finding people that love your niche and uh when you really did well on instagram you had your niche same thing tick tock whatever find the people that love your content get connected with them and then there will be no problem with finding a buyer yeah so i agree with that the key thing is that i hope your take rate is not too high um yeah so [Music] that that's one of the value proposition we're trying to some value we're trying to add to the community um use web 2 distribution channels to quickly find your community and or your community of followers uh no no matter how big and small uh and you can find it anywhere in the world i mean we're rolling out in the us but we're planning to roll out in many other countries soon exactly and this is where we'll connect again and now i see we have one minute left thank you so so much uh for having this very nice discussion and i think uh my takeaway is like like for most of these discussions we will extend this very small space which we are still at by educating others by sharing our experiences by finding the right people and you are all kind of ambassadors right now in your position we are all ambassadors for web three 3. whatever we do um let's connect let's stay in touch thank you sharif thank you thank you thank you guys thank you for your time