NFT 2.0 - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Are NFTs dead? Uh, or are we going to get a resurgence? I mean, I'll quickly start. NFTs were never dead to begin with. I mean, we're still talking about even at its lowest period since the launch of NFTs was doing and this was post FTX was doing like 150 to $200 million a month in sales and now it's like 5600.

And I think for those I I the lens I take is a little bit like, you know, back when people used to talk about how China was dead, right? But everyone who lives in China was like, "What the hell are you talking about?" Right? And it's the same basically in the crypto world when you're with NFTs. If you're not in NFTs, you think it's dead.

But if you're in NFTs, it's really vibrant. There's some really cool innovations. You know, I don't know how many people have heard of punk strategy or for instance, hyper. I mean, that only just launched a few days ago and you know, it's basically rocking the charts and people are you know, I think it's eclipsed uh even in value similar to board apes or higher and and and pudgies, right? but literally overnight trading $50 million a day.

So, so it's it's definitely vibrant.

We have had the craziest old season when you think about it with tokens like Aster, XPL, Pump, you name it. There's been multiple 5 to$15 billion FDV launches. Same thing with NFTs. It's just more less crowded, less crazy, less of the noise. But NFTTS was the single in my opinion and I'm not an OG like you guys most important on boarding event in the history of crypto right back in 2021.

And so the technology is still here to live. Most of these companies are powered by NFTs out there and so they're still there but maybe less from a speculation perspective more from a technical perspective.

Just one thing to add I mean outside of the fact that NFTs brought in people from gaming and so on that kind of stuff as well and you know what we used to have as a metaverse. Um, if you had a uh crypto punk, I would argue that crypto punks were probably the best levered bet on Ethereum, right? Yeah. If you held a crypto punk, you would have been doing better than holding Ethereum. So there's and there these cultural icons in whatever blockchain there are, they become your levered bets because it's like in the real world, you know, you could be having cash, but if you were invested in, let's call it the French economy, maybe you should own some Picassos.

That's actually a levered bet on that particular industries. But so you pick the ones that you feel are those areas and crypto punks is that for Ethereum.

A big part of why NFTTS were sort of uh perhaps dropped a little bit in uh sales and um popularity was the offboarding of reg um royalty fees on platforms like OpenC. Max maybe you can talk a little bit about this and how much that changed the game and how we can try and remedy that with some new approaches especially on on ton and the network effects that you get with Telegram. Yeah, know of course I mean royalties were essential for all the creators to basically make perpetual revenue. It was built in in all the smart contracts and then when OpenC started and Magic Eden, I think Blur came out as well. They just decided to turn it off uh to save some fees which is uh which is not great to be honest.

I mean creators need to, you know, need to make a living. They need to basically, you know, get paid for their IP and uh it was a big controversy essentially like a lot of people were upset about it. you couldn't really legally enforce it and people just stopped creating new ones.

First of all, the the market is pretty much fragmented. there's like different marketplace and obviously there there is openc which is like a dominant market on the um on the in the global like web3 space but the thing is that because there is no like a proper like utility in FT and the proper distribution um it's uh it leads to the exactly the same the problem that I just described that you know royalties are not easy to implement actually the the most of the marketplaces they had to roll it back just because of you know the competition, right? The competition uh drives this problem basically like get get it down to to zero basically in most of the marketplaces and you know when you the challenge here is I believe uh how to create the proper like the friendly environment well all of the like you know marketplaces or utility providers for this NFTts uh and the platform itself like in our case is telegram which is like the uh place where everyone one use on daily base like 100 times a day and NFTs like the attributes of NFTs should be respected in this case if they're not respected they are not uh adapted in the platform so it means that for example you can lose some attribute you cannot put it on your like telegram profile or a social media profile or for example NFC marketplaces will not be able to provide you like the future like for example future features like you know if you want to resell it or whatsoever so that's important I think to create that sort the challenge is to create this environment and this is why we are here and contributing in this

Y I'm I'm going to throw this one to you when that was enforced and and the removal of royalty fees kind of took took place I mean as someone who's heavily involved in that that side of the industry is that worrying to you that you know marketplaces were doing something like that and uh it essentially disincentivizes people to be creating NFTTS

yeah so I mean first of all I think the issue about the uh sort of royalties is that it's a kind of tax, right? And I think a lot of people just don't like to pay taxes. Simple as that, right? A tariff. So when you when you start paying a tax of any sort, there has to be an incentive otherwise it needs legal enforcement, right?

So what we ended up suggesting, which wasn't taken up because people don't like legal enforcement, but it's actually created in contract and just like the music industry and other industries, you could enforce royalties that way and then you force the marketplaces and exchanges to honor that. That's one approach, right? But other than that then you have to align incentives. So the problem with the royalties was that some companies built good stuff but many of them basically just used royalties as a way to extract shall we say value that they never contributed back right and that was part of the problem. So people felt like why am I paying this right whereas you know if you live in a country you're happy to pay taxes because you have security you have police you have you know social services and okay you feel like you need to pay something right there's an element because royalties is still a social contract uh for the most part it's not legal it is you can force enforce it legally but it is an agreement that we have with people so that means you have to innovate um and you know I think there's more innovation coming for instance if you were able to pay royalties and you said that with the profits of the royalty a certain amount would be used to maybe buy back NFTs and now you've seen this in token models like punk strategy right it's an innovation on that model it's still niche and new but basically they say that the more trading people are paying a 10% tax like who would pay a 10% tax on token trading nobody except here I'm buying your punks every time you have certain amount now I'm aligned right so I think royalties aren't dead I think royalties just need to do what typically is good in crypto when you design the right tokconomics which is designing alignment between all the parties and then it works.

Yeah. Fro you you've built like a powerhouse media business, right? When when you saw NFTTS kind of changing and perhaps falling out of the ma, was there any specific reason for that? And um how do you approach the NFT space in general now as a as a business person?

I mean, I think the main reason is people are attracted to fast money in this industry. It's just the way it is and we have to adapt to that with our media as well. I'm sure you guys similar Cointelegraph. We cover I mean we don't chase metas over at the crypt uh rug radio maybe a little more because it's you know more culture oriented but like I host a daily show and you know NFTTS went from being the main topic of conversation for an hour a day to maybe a 5 minute segment at the end of my show and that's the truth right and obviously the eventual punk strategy thing you're talking about but again that's tied to the RC20 so people are more attracted to the token than anything else so it is what it is in a way so I think like NFTTS have kind of lost the the allure of like the quick pump and the quick dump in a way. So that's a good good and bad, right?

Uh I think it's better. Um but you know, people still are attracted to that. Like me personally speaking, you know, I have my Crypto Punk, never selling that. But the millionth token I'm buying or I bought last night probably uh you know, I'm going to get rid of that and I'm not going to feel any some I'm not going to sell and be like, "Oh, damn. I feel bad.

I missed my coin." But when it comes to an NFT, you you're never going to be able to feel like you're part of something more than NFTs. And to this day, and I even see people in the crowd here that I met through NFTs, and that's what changed everything, right? So, I think people are always going to want that. Um, and on the media side, I mean, you know, we still cover it.

You know, we we do our best to like shine a, you know, good light on NFTs. Actually, you guys crushing over a ton. I had the ton folks over on my show. I think it was a week ago or two two weeks ago, right? Right.

Cuz I think the plush it was you. Yeah. The plush Pepes are selling like $25,000. You know, I have a Rolex NFT on my next to my like taunt handle. They like, yo, this thing's worth a lot of money.

I'm like, I didn't know that. Someone sent it to me and all of a sudden it's worth like 250 bucks, but there's like 100,000 of them, right? Something like that. So, like NFTs are thriving and there's still they're always going to be a flex. Like I like to wear my watch.

Some people wear digital watches on their Telegram accounts and you guys are crushing that sense. So, it's like you're always going to want to be part of this NFT movement no matter what. Like we always the same way we're all wearing clothes that we like and I like the same watch like you're always going to like want to have your digital identity one way or another.

When I look at how the space changed, I think the biggest thing was like a distribution network. I think when there was kind of talk of Twitter maybe allowing you to have, you know, like PFPs that you can own and trade, people are excited about that, right? But my approach to NFTs was like if I really want to interact with my NFTs, I go to OpenC, I buy an NFT, but like where do I really put it? How do I really get people to see that this is what I have? And then you start interacting with I mean, put up your hand if you use Telegram as a messaging app.

I'm pretty sure everyone in the room is going to, you know, Okay, there's a few of you that don't, which is surprising. Um,

we'll put a QR code up.

Yeah, there we go. Yeah, we'll we'll bring it up on the on the screen behind me. But Telegram, for those of you that don't know, surpassed a billion users. That's a huge amount of people. People use it as a messaging app.

There's channels, there's groups, there's all sorts of things that you can do on Telegram. And by integrating a blockchain system, it's probably one of the best examples of a blockchain being integrated with uh a network that has a network effect of a billion people. Uh Facebook wanted to do it with with Libra and everything. that was more of a payments network. But but here you have a billion people that could potentially own their username.

They can own sticker packs. They can do all sorts of things. I'm not going to do the talking. I'm going to let Max and and Andrew talk more about that. But a billion users is is a huge selling point and a big reason why there is this NFT renaissance going on at uh on and in Telegram.

Like essentially everything is to do with distribution. Like you need distribution, distribution and distribution. I mean we're we're the only blockchain linked to to a messaging app. civilian users around the world probably 1.5 billion in the next 12 months and for us it was like you know creating a standard and leveling the playing field like if you want to build on ton and come to telegram here are clear rules you know it's creators first serious artists and that your royalties will be respected like it was just very important for us that if we do this that everybody who builds in the ecosystem sort of is playing by the same rules and then it's just a lot a lot easier to get you know to get it rolling and um you know as they say um a rising tide basically like sort of is is is you know lifting all boats.

So if you start getting the critical momentum it just more more brands are coming more IPs are coming more users are coming and it just goes the fly wheel keeps spinning essentially

it's important to create to build the proper like environment right so in this environment the user experience should be seamless uh the onboarding should be you know uh with just few clicks of a buttons you have to get on boarded like for example the payment should be integrated like seamlessly so that it should be like NFC should become accessible and uh that's very important and also you have to create habits you have to uh create this idea of you know that sort of ownership of this type of assets um and assets themselves should have I mean they can have value not just today when you actually bought them because you were ready to pay that's why it has value but because it will uh sustain value or it might potentially grow in its value so is contributing into uh telegram assets uh since I believe like the past like maybe uh two and a half years they started with telegram usernames social handles so basically that was the first NFC basically on telegram that basically uh the idea was to respect the ownership of the social handle right so the second one was anonymous numbers and because it was scarce uh like only like um uh tens like few tens of thousands of this numbers it grew it value it was growing the value was growing every year and it's still like growing right so because of scarce then telegram launched telegram gifts and I could compare telegram gifts and the platform itself is a popart concept but in virtual this exists in a virtual world and popart did everything great uh what's probably in basically it's like it's a physical NFT right but they did everything all the mechanics that you we might imagine that existed in NFT world but which failed Popar did it uh properly and I believe that telegram also did it in completely right way and they educated users right so people uh like chilling with this NFT they put in their profile like next to the uh name and uh also there is like uh like in popart you have labubu but in telegram you have this plush pepis people really want to buy like maybe cheaper more accessible NFTs and then they wants to like potentially this NFT might create have more value in the future like like this plush papers and now we want to democratize it right so we want to implement the standard we basically this is what we do NFT 2.0 you know, we want uh to like all this, you know, NFTs might be related to gating to different, you know, closed communities or it might be related to brands that wants to kind of promote that sort of, you know, their characters or whatever. And uh stickers for example is a great example of we interact with the stickers on daily basis and that might be the stickers might be representation of the assets that you own for example because people like to show like I for examp people who like we go to the to to the road and we see people like who own cars like to watch for example they do this all the time provides that but in a virtual world right so that's the idea keep like create the ecosystem where the uh there is a foundation from the technological perspective from the U user experience perspective um and also with various assets that exist and people really become trusting this. So that's very important. So this is how we build it.

What is it going to take really to to get NFTs back to the gold you know like the the golden season that they had. Um, I look at something like Pudgy Penguins and what Luca did and and built a really great business that took digital collectibles, but also transition that across to real world experiences, plushy toys, you know, like really big integrations with massive companies in America. It's probably one of the best examples I think in of of real world versus digital. Yet, do you think that's that that is the standard that everyone needs to get to to make NFTs pop? I mean I think there's one angle but I think the number one angle still remains uh in in gaming right I mean if you talk about you know you talked about digital flex basically actually owning skins owning gaming items is the number one digital flex and to your point it's not necessarily purely speculative they keep it they want it because it's a status symbol that they can have right and so I think what's interesting though is when you introduce NFTs it comes a little bit into this sort of financialization as well so it's not just like with counterstrike skins it's not like it's just something that is a flex now but it's also that has value but because it has value it becomes that flex and it amplifies it like if a Birkin bag was dropping in value people wouldn't care anymore right it has to have that value as well how do you maintain that which means you do need to introduce you know basically financial constructions into it right and I do want to sort of use this as a little bit of a plug I see Brittany right over there right um and it's an example where you know Alphaton just announced basically the um intention to acquire gy which is a ton ecosystem gaming project, right?

Um, and you know, with like tens of millions of users and there you have a gaming community then of course owning these gifts and items as a way of digital flex. But because the token today, the token moved because of the announcement, the community sort of moves as well as happy, it drives it up. And I think this is what people might not fully understand in the traditional gaming world is that you do have to show the financial outcome to basically give it that status item as well which by the way luxury brands know incredibly well right and those are things some of the lessons together. So I do think gaming is a ticket but of course everything else adds to it as well.

You know what I like about what you guys did with Ton is that they're just accessible. So the era of like the $100,000 NFT is never coming back. No.

Oh, I would disagree. strong disagreement here, but let's talk a year from now.

No, so what I mean I guess is there's a lot like Pudgies are 50 grand, Hyper launched at 60K, Punks are like 20 grand and everything. I just think the era of like the board ape coming out and going to like half a million dollar floor that's probably behind us. Um unless it's tied to something, you know, pretty serious. Um but I just think that whole mania is out and I think people just want more accessible um stickers for example, right? Like for example, this is something we're looking at over at at at rug radio and Marriott now is like how do we build something within a me the messaging app that's going to be able to be accessed for everybody.

Stickers make perfect sense. So we're going to do stickers.

Hell yeah. Exclusive for you guys. But you know what I mean? So it's just like you know I think the demand for NFTTS is immense. The appetite for it is never leaving.

But maybe, you know, the era of just closing your eyes and buying any NFT and it going to like six figure is kind of behind us.

But that Yeah, that sorry that 100,000 is definitely not that that's going to keep going, especially as time goes, right?

Do you guys, Max, do you think the future of NFTs is just on Telegram alone?

Obviously not on Telegram alone, but it would be nice. Like for me, it's fan engagement, loyalty, and just a whole new spectrum which brands haven't really you know, captured because it was too difficult. Yeah.

Like it was, you know, NFTs needed the wallet and a seed phrase and, you know, some whatever chain like within Telegram, it's all within your app and it's abstracted away. So, it's like as easy as sending a text. So, you know, I think we have a we have a good shot at um at making it in that in that regard.