Future of Consumer Crypto: Abstract Chain with Luca Netz & Gabby Dizon at KBW2025

So C, Mr. Coup, the floor is yours now.

Hello. Um, it's uh it's quite an honor to um be moderating the stage today with uh Lucer and Gabby. Um just to just before kicking off the stage, we'll briefly introduce myself because I'm sure everyone knows both uh Lucer and Gabby um but probably not me. So I've been doing games since 2007. um worked with a lot of top brands like Disney and uh toy brands from Hasbro and and uh numerous others making games around those IPs.

Um and have been um shilling uh web 3 games since 2017 um and uh hence have been in that OG group of web 3 gaming and have been shilling that uh ecosystem ever since. Um th um the relationship with Gabby um who also is a web3 game OG um was very natural. Um regarding Luconets and Pudgy Penguins um started uh following um Pudgy Penguins when uh my wife gifted me a Pudgy Penguin when it was about one ETH and then she got hacked. So

best wife ever.

So I had to give her one which was then four ETH. Um but it's all higher than that. So, so uh we're fine and we're fanboy and fan girls um of paji penguin ever since and thus uh hold a big bag of penu and following abstract including most of our team. So um but still like it would be great if you briefly introduce yourselves. I'm uh Lucats.

I'm the CEO of Pudgy Penguins. Uh CEO of Igloo Inc. which holds Pudgy Penguins, an abstract chain. Uh our goal is to create the face of penguins around the world to create uh and maintain the lead of being uh crypto's mascot and hopefully one day the face of finance and uh abstract looks to solve uh and be at least the consumer layer for Ethereum by solving the consumer journey uh as well as bringing fund back to the EVM.

Hi everyone, my name is Gabby Dison, CEO of YG Play. So we are a web 3 gaming publisher. I've been in games for over 20 years now. Entered crypto around 2017 2018. Uh been advocating for web three games ever since.

Great. Um so Luca, I just refreshed your memory over there, but last year um I was also speaking um at KBW and briefly met you um in the lobby of this hotel and like you were not surrounded by anyone, so it was easy to approach you and get a selfie. Um and uh I I still remember that intimacy you had um and probably not just with me but like everyone that approaches you and basically um are big fans of Pudgy Penguin. Anyone who bags or holds Pudgy and its um ecosystem like um like it would be great if you can share where that energy and intimacy comes from and how that's a part of Punchy Penguin um and its ecosystem. Yeah, this one's really surprising to me because I think like crypto founders somehow it gets lost on them that they're like one of us.

Like we're one of you guys. I don't look at anybody in this room um as lesser than me. I look at you all of you guys like equals. Anybody listening to this right now could be more successful, can build a bigger brand and have a more important crypto project than Pudgy Penguins. I believe in that and I believe in you guys.

Uh and so I think it's just really important to treat you guys with the same respect that I would want to be treated. and I was in the audience four years ago looking at somebody else, you know, speak away. Uh so the hope is is that uh at the end of the day, everything about Pudgy Penguins is treating people uh the way that you would want to be treated, treating others like equals. Even if you're the biggest billionaire or the smallest holder, uh we're all a part of the huddle, we're all braving the cold and we're all trying to get to the same destination. And so I think that's kind of our mantra.

Uh but I really encourage a lot of other crypto founders to follow that. I mean, uh, respect is really important. It's important for me. I hope it's important for you. And I hope if I ever interact with any of you guys on an individual level that I give you the respect that you feel like you deserve.

Um, to add to that, um, I think a lot has changed since I met you last year. Um, like and u, you know, you were on stage in the Q keynote like half an hour ago. Um, what has changed since then? Um, and including your uh, feelings of coming back to Korea um, after then? Yeah, I mean I'm I've absolutely fallen in love with Korea over the last couple of years.

To all of my Korean um native folks in the crowd, you guys should be so proud of your country. Uh it is an unbelievable place and not only one of the hubs of web 3 culture, but truly one of the hubs of web 2 culture. Uh K culture is completely taken over the world and so you guys should be really proud. I mean, what has changed? I think probably the biggest material change since we last saw each other is probably Pangu.

Our holder base is a lot bigger. Uh before before Pangu, we had a bunch of NFTTS and unfortunately the NFTs by nature, if you have a successful NFT, it prices out a lot of people. Uh and so it gotten to the point where, you know, 50 60 80 $100,000 to be a part of our ecosystem was frankly too much money. Uh, and it seemed evidently clear that we needed to, you know, to actually be the the face and mascot of crypto, like I had prophesized and like I had told everybody that we were becoming, we needed something where everyone could align. And so probably to your point, there's probably a little more people following uh you know know saying hi to me this time around just cuz we actually have millions of holders, millions of people are Pudgy Penguins and Pangu align versus the last time you and I saw each other, you know, we probably had 10,000 unique holders because the asset was so expensive that only a couple people could end up buying into it.

But now I'm really happy. I think we're in a really great position. Our NFTs are our first edition collectibles. We have Pangu, which is this mass market collectible that really aligns everyone's interests uh with the success of the brand and our hope is to be and to represent crypto in the best way possible. I think we're doing that.

Uh but I also think you guys have yet to see the best of Pudgy Penguins. Uh I I I really believe that. Amazing. Um over to you, Gabby. Um so YG has been the de facto gaming ecosystem.

Um and you YG has been basically um they they you pushed um the 2021 gaming summer that followed the DeFi summer. Um since then what has changed and um and also like if you can share like why you've kind of on boarded on on Abstract um what got you here?

Yeah, thanks Juny. 4 years has been a long time since then and uh since then we've been working on growing the community and also trying to figure out what really does work in terms of web3 gaming. I think people have tried to make a lot of different types of games that have NFTs that have web 3 elements. Honestly, not a lot of that has worked, but we believe we've found a formula that work. We launched our game Land uh 4 months ago on Abstract Chain which kicked off our web3 game publishing unit YG play.

So since then uh it's been a great ride. We've seen things work again. We we have seen traction that uh frankly barely anyone has seen in web3 gaming in years. So we're just uh accelerating that now.

Great. Um I think today I just um briefly checked tune analytics and also checked with some numbers with you. Um so abstract right now has about 3.4 million accounts set up um and more and increasing I I think um and also lowland um that's built uh built and published on um abstract has about 600k users. So that's about 20

odd percent of abstract users. Um so I mean the numbers are growing. It's it's it's doing well. Um, and since we're talking about consumer crypto today, like it would be great if you both can address what the synergies are and like what more you want to see on Abstract and more interactions from the abstract chain for you, Gabby. Yeah.

Yeah. I think uh there's there's multiple synergies with somebody like myself and Gabby. I look at Gabby as one of the best builders in crypto. Uh I really believe that. I think the way they think of gaming, the way they think of consumer apps is best-in-class.

You know, I have two verticals that I think need people like Gabby. One is Pudgy Penguins in the sense that Pudgy Penguins has a business model which is called web 3 licensing. This idea that if you're an app builder and you want extra go to market, if you want us to handle your the the PMF of your product, we skin it, we brand it Pudgy, and then we ship it to the market. And so, you know, working with people like Gabby, there's opportunities for us to go and make products together where I know he's going to build a best-in-class product because YG and their whole crew are best-in-class builders. Uh, and then, you know, we can help monetize and bring more momentum and more experiences to the to the Pudgy Penguin community.

On the abstract side, I mean, it's, you know, pretty obvious to me. I think abstract or blockchains in general, uh, live and die by the apps that are built on the chain. Uh, chains don't make apps. uh apps make chains and uh I need as many good builders as possible to deploy good products and good builds on the chain and in return we try to give him as much distribution as possible. And so the way that the abstract is positioned, you know, I have the ability to pull levers on the platform via the portal product to help drive more users and more clicks into his game.

And because his game is so good, people click into it, they play it, they have fun, uh and they money and they make money and they make money and so you know people keep coming back. So, it's a really synergistic relationship. I uh I hope to meet more people like Gabby, though they're far and few between.

What's interesting about uh working with Abstract has been so there's a lot of chains that want to onboard games. Everyone thinks uh games will onboard mass adoption and a lot of them are offering very serious grants to get games to come over. Guess how much in grants Abstract has given out so far? Zero. But why do the best apps going there?

Because they have users, they have distribution and they have paying users. So Yug has always been known as a very strong Asian base. We have some really good players in LATAM. And tapping into abstract when we launched Land, we saw in our analytics that the top two countries geos that we had were USA and South Korea. And that took us by surprise because these were geos where we had not been strong traditionally.

So being able to tap into that distribution advantage of abstract was a big help for us.

Great. Um so yeah um adding to that um how's how has it how has your um experience been on building on abstract up to now because now you're a builder.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's two things about abstract. There's abstract the blockchain then there's the portal which is the app store. And the app store part is really interesting because uh I'm used to working with app stores having work on mobile iOS uh Android devices and uh the interesting thing about the abstract portal is that they have things that you would want for a platform.

So for example, we first developed the game using abstract chain and then uh after it launched, we got on the portal, they gave us a feature and when we got featured, we got a user boost and we got a revenue boost, which is something that you're used to from dealing with uh app stores, right? So that means that the platform advantage is real and that is a platform's job. You want to uh you want to have discovery for your best applications. you want to go out and acquire users for these applications and you want these applications to make money. So I think abstract has been doing a good job of that.

Yeah. Um touching upon this Luca um I just saw your keynote. So I know like uh Pudgy Penguin has up to 300 billion views up to now plus. Um like how do you streamline all this exposure and attention to dabs within abstract and um yeah like how do you keep that alive?

It's it's a great question. Um, there's there's a multitude of different answers, but at least on the Pudgy side, it's imperative that I work with people like Gabby and YG and maybe others to build Pudgy Penguin products that I can directly use and leverage the Instagram and the Twitter and other places to bring people onto the chain that can then go and use our product, but then also trickle down into LOLand and other products on the platform. So a big sprint for us is I think you guys will see probably 10 to no probably way less three to four um you know Pudgy Penguin branded products on abstract and I think the purpose of that is I want to be able to leverage you know pushing you know pushing a Pudge you know Pudgy Penguin's pushing something and it's not Pudgy Penguins related doesn't make any sense uh and we're not going to dilute the brand just because there's a chain involved in the ecosystem but we will and we want and we deeply desire to go and make more web 3 products. s that are onchain that we can then leverage to bring more people onto the actual abstract chain. Outside of Pudgy Penguins though, like how do you grow abstract?

One, the product integrity on the platform needs to be good. And I think the the platform itself is going under a rebrand cuz I don't think I don't believe you can push a right now the the portal for those who are familiar is portal.ABSXYZ. That's not like a brandable thing to go and take to mass. Uh so it needs to be its own brand.

and it needs to be branded like a Phantom for example and then whatever that branding is, it needs to go out to the world. Uh, and I'm very confident in this team's ability to scale user bases. That's the one thing in the world that I'm never worried about our ability is like, you know, can this team go and get more eyeballs, get more people clicking on this website and onboarding? I think our issue before we get to that step and we scale the portal product is making sure that it's built to convert. right now it's built to convert web 3 natives.

Uh but they they aren't I think the the huge TAM that's in front of us. I think in the short term there's probably things we can be doing in Korea better things that we can be doing in the United States and we will you'll see those short-term fixes. Uh, but what I'm really focused on is going into the new year having Portal rebranded and having this really new robust product that we can go and take to the biggest streamers in the world, the biggest influencers in the world, uh, and and have them play, you know, games like LOLand. So, um, would it be safe to say that, um, outside of Pudgy Penguin, um, Abstract wants to kind of funnel all these different IPs and other projects as kind of a not a subbrand, but everyone that on boards onto Abstract? Um, in the beginning maybe it was Pi Penguin, but these brands are being nurtured by abstract and thus the X factor is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah, there's a there is an edge case for deploying and building on abstract which is one of the hopes for abstract was a couple fold. The first one is we saw the opportunity in blockchains the same way we saw the opportunity in NFTTS. Blockchains you like there's no way that we're the first one to pull off an app store but we are right. So it's like there's like obvious things that need to be done that blockchains haven't been doing that we believe we can innovate on and help pioneer what the future of blockchains look like. One, two, we needed a place to build all of our Pudgy Penguin products on top of, right?

Pudgy Penguins has products in Walmart that have L2 integrations. Like that L2 and that value should acrue to our ecosystem and our community. And so I didn't want to leak value. And then the third one is really understanding I think the core uh the core ability to distribute and fix the consumer journey uh and really do something that I think nobody in crypto has been able to do, which is really scale a mass market ecosystem. And so those I think are the three functions that I think abstract served in the beginning, but I think it's metamorphosized into something so much bigger.

Um, going over to you Gabby. Um, I'm when I go into the abstract community, Discords and pages, um, Telegram groups, there's more and more users like asking for tips on how to get more XP through Land. And it seems like Land has become one of those brands in abstract that's following um all the craze that that Luca just explained. Um can you touch upon that like Yeah. So XP is really interesting because it's a like platformwide way to to jumpstart your user base with within abstract.

And I think the the intention of the abstract team at least from the way I see it is that it wants to give you a jump start on your audience when you launch. I don't think that teams should be using it as a crutch for their GTM. So, it definitely helped us bootstrap our initial user base and now we've identified okay these are the things that we want them to do within our game that can help them get uh XP and that has kind of helped uh boost the I guess the the retention of the community that is using the game. So yeah, when when used properly, I think XP is a great way to uh to to just align incentives further within your community. But uh yeah, one thing I want to say to all developers is that do not use that as a crutch for your own GTM.

Um so yes, I was hoping you would address more because again XP is one way to get in, but out of it you're creating much more value. You're basically building an on-ramp for all these games to on board on Abstract and Lowland is just one of them. And like could you touch upon that and add also like what's your road map after lowland and like how everything

um last week we just released a game called uh giga chatbat with our friends from dabs and uh the process for getting into abstract portal has actually changed a bit in the last 4 months. So now Abstract wants us to see that we can get our own users before getting listed on the portal before getting XP which is I think a great way to see that these apps can survive on their own. So now we're lining up our creators, our game nights. We had uh a PC bank activation uh the other day to prove that yes, we can get our own users and we can even get new users into the platform and into our game.

Great. Um yeah uh the so another question for you Gabby. Uh gaming um has I think not been trending very well. Um and since I see there are a lot of chains that are kind of like dismissing the whole sector. Um but we all know that gaming is the mass user adoption um um uh subject.

Um what's what's your view on on that? Yeah, I think there's been a lot of negativity in web3 gaming in the last few years and since the heights of 21. I think people have tried to create some web 3 products that are trying to go after the web 2 user web 2.5. Um, and I think the biggest mistake has been kind of getting the cart before the horse.

U, we're not making products for the people who are here right now. I think for YG play, we want to make products that delight the web 3 user, the casual DGEN, and then use the strength of that to radiate outwards. And that's been succeeding for us so far.

Okay. Um, since we're kind of out of time, um, there are two questions I would like to address. So, we are probably going to go over time, but like one is um, uh, in addition to that, like while there's a lot of the chains are now focusing on DeFi because that's a trend. um how do you keep yourself focused um because most of the DeFi stuff that's on abstract is complementaryary to consumer onboarding and mass users adoption so the the focus is on consumer crypto um so how do you keep that focus the second question is um since Korea is a a consumer-led uh market um would like to kind of address one of their questions um what's the future for XP probably after TGE yeah

yeah so I I will say the whole purpose of abstract is we are a purpose-built chain, meaning we're not general purpose. So, we're not doing a hundred different things. And so, I was actually a little naive though because the one thing I didn't focus on at all was DeFi. But what DeFi does is it enables liquidity to make these consumer experiences like Gabby's better. And so, the one thing that we were deficient on early on is DeFi.

I don't look at it as like a priority where I want to be the biggest and best DeFi chain. I'll leave that up to Arbitum. I'll leave that to Ethereum and and and those chains because I think they will serve that function better. But I did neglect it more than I think we should have. And so we're fixing that.

And I think that's going to add a lot more liquidity uh to the chain. That's going to enable consumer behaviors like memecoins and certain applications like LOL land to have, you know, more robust systems that they can enable to make their games more fun and more enjoyable. Um, you know, XP, the elephant in the room is, you know, XP will eventually, uh, you know, index you for some future rewards. The one thing I've been super proud about, uh, over the last couple of years is I think Pudgy Penguins and the igloo, uh, and I think abstract will follow in this spirit is we've been the most generous ecosystem this cycle. If you look at the money we've taken and extracted from web 3, which is zero, uh, no mints, basically no royalties.

uh and the money we've given. We gave over $1.5 billion dollars of today's prices. No company in crypto that is net new over the last four years has that spread of generosity. I'm in the business of mutually beneficial relationships.

I'm in the business of supporting the people who support us. I'm in the business of giving back to the people who see and and and prop our products up for success. I do look at the XP system eventually and our and our vision for it was like AMX Rewards and I always look at XP as the cherry on top. Gabby said something that I really appreciate, which is, you know, you should be using abstract because you actually love it. And if you don't love it, I don't recommend you use it because it's not easy to gain the XP.

Everyone complains about, oh, I don't know how I get XP. And that's intentional. I don't want you to know because I don't want you coming for that reason. Now, I want you to be rewarded if for some reason you perform good actions or actions that matter and and and if you spend time. But, you know, don't use the chain if you think that's like the only thing you're going to get.

use it as an extra benefit, you know, because you're playing LOL land and you love it so much.

It's not disappoints farming program.

Yeah. Uh and uh and we're intentional there and and I think, you know, I'm very conscious of I think where most chains have gone post TGE and we're going to make sure that we address that uh with the XP system moving forward.

Great. Thank you for your answer. So, this will be the end of the panel. I did ask the organizers for 30 minutes plus, but uh here it is. Um and uh yeah, look forward more from abstract and YG Land.

Thank you everyone. Have a great day.

Thank you.

Thank you very much our moderator and dear P panelist. Thank you very much.