The Future of NFTs - Panel featuring Brady Dale, Lauren Halstead, Chase Zhang and more

how you doing we're going to answer all your questions about nfts right now my name is brady dale formerly a reporter of coindesk now with the defiance here with an outstanding panel of people who will convince you that nfcs are a fascinating fascinating thing um let's just go straight down and have each of my panelists introduce themselves starting starting with you hello hello hey guys how are you doing uh my name is hygiene lang i run the hobie adventures uh the image get harder on the mic there harder on the mic harder on the mic how's this alrighty i'm hygiene from hobie avengers of the hoboboo global exchange and uh to keep it short we're launching an nft marketplace of our own in the very next soon future you heard it here first hello i still have my voice so pumped about that my name is lauren halstead from chain link labs get a little closer a little closer yeah closest close enough all right uh i work on dynamic nfts at chain link labs so we bring real world data into nfts to gamify the experience um the outlook is we hope to create fantasy sports and uh tons of uh cool projects with nfts and push push push the space forward thank you thank you hi my name is uh nick emmons i'm the ceo of upshot and we're trying to bring uh nfts more into d5 through improved nfc valuation mechanisms awesome hello everyone my name is jacqueline i'm the ceo and founder of nami we're later to build on ethereum and we're currently building quite a bit of really cool stuff on the end of this we get a little closer on the mic there i can even get you over here get on the mic more even more yeah like this okay anyway i was saying i'm the ceo founder of layer 2 called nami and we're building a lot of really cool stuff on and of this and look forward catching up with you now all right so you know all of us who are here we're bought into this stuff we've been around crypto for a while but the big objection from all the normies and the mainstream media over the last year has been that you know why are people spending so much money just to buy a jpeg so uh each of you whichever one of you wants to start just jump in convince this room the nfts are really much more than jpegs i'm happy to start so nfts are way more than jpegs they are communities they're your friends um i was out last night at a wizards meetup and i got this sweet bag so it's really just bringing value to communities like everybody just wants to be invited to the party and being in the party that's what nfts are about it's that opportunity to be a part of a group of people that you agree with that you see the world the same way shaking a little bit they are more than just jpegs they are physical they are everything they could be a building they could be a person so yeah that's my take on it nice yeah i'll second that um i think nfts are about community one thing that i did uh recently to sort of attest to that is i i sold one of my board apes to buy 36 crypto dick butts and and the community there has been so accepting it's been it's been really a pleasure to feel like i'm part of something larger i think beyond the community aspect of nfts though nfts are at its core a structural innovation they allow us to essentially tokenize anything represent anything on chain so as more exotic and esoteric financial instruments and vehicles come online they will be represented as nfts and will really be able to fill in the rest of this picture of what a truly decentralized expressive financial system looks like so hold on let's pause right there i just want to get a feel for the room here give me a big round of applause if you think trading one board eight for 36 dick bucks was definitely the move all right if you think that was crazy give us a round of applause kind of evenly divided on your trade there we don't know i'm fine with it i'll be buying more don't worry it was a bold move all right whoever wants to go next i mean who says jpegs doesn't have value right but to me um in addition to what my co-panelists were saying i think what um gives the uniqueness to nfts and or the value behind it is its uniqueness one is one is different from the other and second of all if we're talking about other forms of art we think of its value uh it was built on the historical um difference that it makes or the significance that it holds from a period where we don't have such a thing to we do have such a thing it says something about what this generation is making out of technology uh based on that and making something new out of it it's something never was that was seen before and based on how say 100 years from now people then look back in time at this moment say okay around 2020 around 2020 2019 ish there's a bunch of people who started to realize something based on additionalized ledger a series of codes a series of random verifiable indicators or numbers created this form of art and that's what's making it unique so you're basically saying we're in the impressionist moment right now where the area right where i think we're in the very very early stages honestly i've only come to realize this whole thing um very recently and i am starting to encourage folks around me to see this my way or at least share my view on that point cool so i agree with many of the points that have been raised here but i also disagree with with many of those ultimately the price of a jpeg is being set by the market so if somebody wants to pay a million dollars rightfully so has to do it but uh i think that um that there are a lot more to that right so you need to find that that i mean what is going to give value to jpeg ultimately is going to be scarcity and utility and the first way we experienced in 2021 was fantastic you know nfts went to the forefront of publications you know rockstars and sports athletes and so forth but that was just a little taste of what it can be right and if we could doing that it's not going to go very far we need to find that utility that is scarcity we need to bring in the big boys we need the technology because unfortunately technology is not there irrespective of what most of you might think we cannot on board a billion people tomorrow in the nfc world so uh it is our duty to avoid being in the radar of the sec as with many other cryptocurrencies just to find that the sweet spot right so we can find that scarcity utility on board the big brands and actually build something that people want to pay money for so that's my take and uh i just want to add to that like lauren was saying she thinks that nfd is just more than jpegs i think pictures jpegs whatever you call it is just only one form of representation in the physical world of such code based on such ledgers and obviously physical objects real estate something something something else something that we might have not even heard of that we're going to create in the next decade it's also going to be nft 100 um besides the physical world it does really make sense in the metaverse um here i go with my pokemon analogy as always but say you guys are all playing pokemon go right now you all will see that same pikachu but with an nft when you capture that pikachu it'll be your own pikachu and you can bring that pikachu different powers so i think that's a good example of the way think about it so when we all are in the metaverse if we choose to go down that black hole um yeah you'll be able to have your own little animals your own own people your own friends and they'll be identified by that that um address that's attached to it so i think it makes sense there it's like a dream my own little pikachu i always wanted so okay so another big objection we get in this space uh is that this is kind of ico 2.0 you know it's just it's a bunch of people chasing a bunch of money and it's it's kind of crazy hype and on some level you know we can say it's it's all art and it's this beautiful new art era but it does seem to be heavily about the money and does that like undermine sort of the the more visionary values that we were trying to represent with the idea that lauren was talking about of nft sort of being the beginnings of community like is is the value kind of a problem i'm gonna do this to nick first since you're the one dealing with value sure i think there's a lot of noise undoubtedly we're in a bull market there's a lot of noise there's a lot of money to be made i don't think that takes away from the the quality and sort of the historical landmarks that are these blue chip nfts the punks the apes the dick buts the the squiggles these more generative pieces these things are building genuine communities these things are creating and capturing genuine lasting value and so they will live past these cycles many nfts will go to nothing many will fade to irrelevancy as happens with these these sort of uh bull cycles in markets but i don't think that takes away from sort of the the blue chip nature of of the the kind of set of genuine nfts or quality nfts um i totally agree especially one we're very early one second we can ride through that first kind of waves right and for any kind of assets especially starting let's say 2013 where when people were starting to trade bitcoins and why not yes of course back then a lot of people were saying the prices go up and down what's real value behind it that's all noise people trade as a means to find its price it's the price discovery uh mechanism and what nick is doing is part of that right right um so we have we've seen projects we've seen collections we've seen artists issue new collections of uh nfts yes people go crazy sometimes and then on the secondary market of those collections people go even crazier do we say that the price is too high or is the market too overheated those are all relative terms one like i said i think we're in a very very early stage of impressionist era on this whole new class of assets and we're gonna have a whole lot more of turbulence and ebbs and flows on the price itself if it's that if that's one indicator of its actual value but through trade through giving it more use cases to developing more forms based on that code i think we're going to get there in time but let's write out the turbulence together right so yeah there is a lot of value in the in the early big projects and they have settled and they have done very well but as it happens often in cryptos you were saying about the ico era what we see is a combo of copy and paste copy and paste people trying to get rich quick and that's just not going to work because we have what we could call so much [ __ ] credit with the industry right if we could cope with doing the same stuff we will run out of [ __ ] credit and then corporations will not want to embrace this technology called nfts right so it is our duty as tech people just to go out and innovate and present alternatives different ways to to to build communities as you're indicating or different ways to engage with brands or consumers but it is our duty to do that i i personally think nfts are interesting you know i'm a reporter who covers defy that covers decentralized finance and to me what nfts represent is like the beginning of property on the internet and there's nothing that uh there's nothing that finance likes more than property right so it's the to me nfts are the beginning of what i like to call niftify uh the marriage of nfts and d5 but really i think that actually is just finance but i wonder what you guys think like is on some level are we confusing ourselves this notion of nfts because it's mostly art right now but people are doing a lot of other cool stuff with nfts that isn't really art exactly the the best known example is uniswap v3 positions are represented with nfts which is a very cool use of the technology but it doesn't feel the same as a board ape you know and it feels kind of dumb to lump them in the same category like i don't know what do you guys think about that sort of is it confusing is it fine i don't know what's your thought confusing is fun um like i said jpegs like or people call art or what you call board apes style or series of any kind of the ones the pfps that you can buy on an open seat yes that's one form of an empty that's mostly i would say most widely accepted at this moment but then again we're going to see other forms of property or property like you said are called assets based on that technology and going to be represented in other forms physical or electronic and we're going to try and all of us here are trying to give the code the nt more meaning by allowing more use case on top of that um nick is doing uh tr uh price discovery we're launching the nmt marketplace trading is one of the first things that we can do with properties but then after that we're gonna see uh gaming items we're gonna see obviously profile pictures uh we're gonna see avatars we're gonna see real estate in the matter versus and people are one of us trade two let's bring people to it three how do they interact and four do they generate revenue do they generate value do they generate entertainment stuff for any kind of participant in the sphere so weird is or or confusing it's fun yeah see lauren really seemed to want to jump in there what's what you seem to have a thought my thoughts um no i think it's confusing but it's really not confusing as if you just like it's just really just anything ownership so like bringing more value to nfts what we're going to see i think is you know right now most ford ape holders have their board ape and they eat ram in their house and we have to find more use cases so we lend out the nft people can borrow off of it you can show the value and then that person can go out and buy something else besides ramen maybe that's all they want to eat but um yeah just using like nfts as collateral collateral for lending i think is pretty much the future which is similar what ave is doing but whatever the physical photo what i'm curious about with what you said chain link is working on with like you know potentially fantasy football on nfc or whatever is like how hard is that to do with the with the infrastructure stack we have right now because it sounds like you would have an nft that needs to be able to change over time right like so i'm just curious like you know how hard is that with what we have how it's it's all completely possible so any any data so right now it's easiest with sports data or price feed data like we're famous for for our d5 rd5 price feed so say you wanted to have an ethereum mood ring that ethereum boot ring could turn green when the price of heath goes up can turn red when the price goes down if anybody wants to create it i would i would love that um but it's definitely possible but the more people that buy into this the easier it will be to be done because then there'll be more nodes operating um the biggest hurdle right now is obviously the cost of operating a node to provide data in real time to update a sports nft in real time but um with more buy-in and more people interested in this it's 100 possible um i think within the next few years we'll see an entire like the nfl gamifying all their nfts so the beginning of the season you pick not tom brady anymore but if he ends up winning the super bowl that nft will have extreme value and then there's other things chain-link can do with nfts we have a verified ram this function so proving on chain randomness so if you have that tom brady nft at the end of the season then maybe you get a random chance to beat him in real life and that that's what chain link can do he can make sure things are fair and true which is why truth over trust pushing that everything math can prove everything so definitely a lot of things we can do with nft so the more creative ideas people have they come to us and basically we just build out all these new ideas so just let me go back to one thing that you said about the property so um that is a little bit of a fallacy yes it is true that the first games that sell property in form of nfts are going to be successful because this novell is interesting will engage people but the difference between physical property and digital property is that you have limited and infinite so that is not going to match very well second in terms of cool stuff that you can do with nfts we have put together a poc which is vr that i would love you to come and check it out and which leverages as well the power of for example the technology we have built which is infrastructure infrastructure is not very sexy i have to say but isn't it without infrastructure we cannot build anything i think but um infrastructure is sexy yeah of course i mean infrastructure is necessary um get a round of applause for infrastructure out there there you go there you go there you go but yeah i mean again it comes down to scarcity utility and we it's our job to figure out what is that we can do to engage those communities and brands and bring them on board because it's not enough selling you know no very cool expensive first generation of nfcs we need to find that sweet spot asap that's why we have to give them more utilities gamifying nfts is essential to keep it going um i i don't see any other way around it obviously the board apes will continue i see them becoming giant global brands like gucci um that's really the future i think of those projects but to make something interesting it needs to change in real time to data make it give you an incentive like why did i buy this nft like i don't know i joined the club it's like no i bought this nft because next season there's a random chance i'm going backstage with the red hot chili peppers yeah i i i just uh kind of build on top of this i think nft as a term is more of a a reference to a sort of file format for this decentralized uh world and not necessarily a given category or a specific category of assets as increasingly more esoteric financial assets are represented as nfts which they will because nfts are our structural innovation at its core the term nft will sort of fall out of vogue and we'll have more specific kind of defined terms for the the kind of subcategories that fall into nfts we're using nf2 nfts synonymously with art and collectibles right now because we're in a very nascent state right now where art and collectibles are what have captured the the kind of world's attention and excitement of nfts but the term itself will fall to the wayside i believe as more kind of diverse asset classes start getting built on top of this file format essentially i definitely agree especially just it's the technology behind it it's the file format what we do with it what it represents with the form actually people can interact with that's going to be different right and i want to respond to what jacob was saying about the property scarcity part i don't necessarily think that scarcity is the only thing that separates uh well let's say metaverse property property from the real properties that we see on that down the street obviously we only have so much land in the city of denver and there's so much i know corner units for commercial users imminence is supposed to yes we can create uh monumental amounts of demand just come constantly copy and pasting them but the thing is still i think we're very early stage at what we can figure out these things can do it's not only about accessing to a plot of uh not physical land in the metaverse what it does what the billboards on it shows in the advertisement like what many of our projects do but also it's only a representation of a spot in the metaverse it's really what goes on behind the scenes i think that matters because even if say the metaverse shows that this land is about a thousand square feet in their world in their world can we only pack a two-bedroom uh house there or can we pack more because each we can create non-physical access points from each layer and then it takes you to like a portal um to different functionalities that opens up a whole new world behind those stores so um forced scarcity like some kind of coins some like very many early versions or collections of nfts does drive up the price because yeah there are only so many of them but later on i don't think scarcity is going to be necessarily tied with the price value or how they're going to be used so you're making a lot of assumptions that your reasoning is right right but 90 plus percent of those assumptions do not exist yet in the so-called metaverse because no even most people don't even [ __ ] know what the metaphase is so let's go back to that second if we had 21 infinite number of you know bitcoins it wouldn't be the same price we all know that so yes you're right it's about utilities car cities about what can you get done with it right why would i want to buy it in the case of uh you know punk or but yeah it's the first one it's pretty [ __ ] cool and in 10 years we'll still be the first one but what we see is everybody copying pasting and hoping to make yet another million bucks so it just comes down to you know pushing the boundaries a little bit further and it comes on to us so yeah a lot less talking more doing but yeah your your assumptions were right but still very much uh over promise and the delivery nobody's delivering that just yet well it's not a hundred percent though right because like if you go back to the ico era everyone talks about that era as 100 garbage and that's not true though right like it was mostly like most of the projects were garbage but most of the money actually went to projects that are still going today and have shipped right so so similarly i think we have a lot of copy paste nfts but there's also some pretty strong ones you know we learned on the stage today that apparently dick butts are already blue chips um i think someone was pumping their bags there a little bit but whatever um but but you know spinning is coming between apes big butts will flip apes okay the dick butts will flip apes everyone should know that right now but so i guess my point is that like yes there's a lot of copy paste but probably there is a bunch of diamonds in this early rough it seems like and that's what we have to push for right we have to push for those diamonds to go to the very front so then we can actually onboard the next billion users right because the way it is right now is not going to cut it then back to your ico comment absolutely i mean we did one 2017 we built one of the first layer twos and we're still in business so yeah you have some good stuff coming out of it groovy we have two minutes left and i'm sorry if i misunderstand anyone up here i can only get about thirty percent of what anyone's saying right now so uh uh i apologize in advance so one last thing on the future of nfts i'm just curious are there any pudgy penguins in the room pudgy penguins got a couple okay do you guys so right now pudgy penguins is kind of this like this rebellions going on among the owners of pudgy penguins to take it over from the people who made it which is this interesting thing because early in nfts in the early in the nft era the idea was it was a great way for artists to make more money in a new way and now it's sort of people start to think like no no if you buy one we all own this thing together and we all share in the profits and so it seems to me like what do you guys think about the idea of nft the future of nfts really being this like crazy new form of human coordination and governance like what's your really quick reaction there we have like next to no time but yeah no i i love that you brought this up so i was down art basel at the pudgy penguin party um about a week before everything blew up and it's just so interesting to see that the community around it is outweighing the people who started it like all my a ton of my friends a lot of people out there in the stage are budgie penguin owners and this is the new coordination like doesn't matter who started it it's the fact that's going to keep going that's how amazing it is really i think at least yeah i i think it uh really quickly i think it just attests to the kind of strength of community around these things it's not the creators that are controlling how people are going to react and kind of move through a given nft or a given community the community feels a sense of ownership a cert a sense of sort of fervor for the success in a specific direction for these nfts and i think that the the kind of pudgy penguin case is a decent case study in that i'm a guy who's all for experiments like if you draw a painting then it's a piece of property you own it you own it but if you issue a collection of mt there's this new voice i'm saying okay everybody who got it or adhesive it owns the whole thing or they're ever going to share i think these are just new ways or people trying to express uh how they think this type of technology or this kind of property asset if you call it uh built on the nfd uh the protocol or the file format and i cannot necessarily say which one is holding more truth or of the real world how it works but i welcome all types of that cool all right well thanks for our panel for coming thanks for all of you for listening uh help me make the term nifty fi a thing and uh enjoy eath denver peace