#BUIDL Week Fireside Interview with pplpleasr (Emily Yang)

yeah so thanks for having me um i guess my background is that i was working in visual effects and feature animation for a few years after i was i graduated and then how i got started in fts is basically well in 2017 i made my first investments in cryptocurrency just because um like it made sense to me like i was reading about it and i found the blockchain to be super revolutionary and then so yeah but it wasn't until 2020 when i was actually unemployed that i saw sort of an opportunity to uh combine sort of like my skill set and this like world of crypto that i have like discovered um and nfts weren't like that big then so it was actually during um d5 or we know it's defy summer which is when d5 started having sort of like this huge surge that i got my start in the industry and i what i was doing was just i was just making these little like 30 second animations with different d5 protocols and then last year in march i made the unisop v3 animation and then it went viral and i auctioned it off as an nft and then um it sold for a lot of eth and pleaser dow was formed specifically to buy that piece and so what pleaser job was at the time was literally just um people who were like in the industry and either like fans of my work or people that i have worked with before um they basically a bunch of them came together you know like d5 founders just a lot of like really smart people like pulled money together and um bid on it as a collective and they won and i don't know like life has exploded ever since it's kind of crazy um cool so you've been at the forefront of like all of this nft explosion over the past year it's a new concept for a lot of people um there's a lot of bad nft takes out there so i wanted to know like what's the funniest or maybe your favorite like bad nft take and um like how do you how do you address that when someone comes to you like with with an nft take um well you know recently i saw like a bunch of comments online that were like oh nfts are like beanie babies you know like they're basically saying that it's like a bubble and that it's a fad um and i mean so that's one of them and i think you know sort of like my response to that is like well nfts are not like beanie babies because that would be like saying stuffed animals is a scam you know it's like stuffed animals is just stuffed animals right like beanie babies is a specific brand or product and so similar with nfts right now i feel like it's so new that people are getting it sort of like mixed up but what nfts are is really the technology behind you know putting this information on the blockchain and storing it as a token of ownership and so you know you could say board apes like can be like beanie babies in the future because that's a specific product and brand you know not to fud board apes like i have apes so like i wanted to go up forever but i'm just saying like you know you should think of it as the technology behind it and not that and so you know it's like kind of like saying the internet or like electricity is going to go away or something but it's not because it's the technology right totally um so i want to talk a little bit about the mashup of dows and nfts um so in your mind how do these two things go together you know i guess curious about how can like nft creators and artists themselves benefit from dows and then also vice versa how can individuals um you know provide value for groups um and like i don't know if you've seen any cool benefits for individuals joining dows in the nft space like what's your take there well i think you know a useful way to think about daos right now is that they're kind of basically like decentralized companies right and so um really what's valuable about it is the fact that it is a collective of you know a bunch of different people's brain powers coming together and you know i think the problems and sort of issues that we're facing as like a society are getting more and more complex by the day and you know it's definitely gotten to a point now where i think very very few individuals can come and solve a problem and so it needs you know the power of a collective to basically come together you know and i always think of this as an analogy to like animation right like a pixar movie takes you know a whole studio of like a couple hundred people to make a really really well defined and like good animation and final product and so you can think of like a dao is the same thing like it's the coordination of a lot of people with different skill sets and different areas of expertise of knowledge that come together and create ultimately a better product and so that's how dows can you know benefit the individual is that it's very you know you learn a lot um and you can create better products working together and so for but for the other way around it's a similar relationship where you know if you have something that you think you can contribute to a dao then um you should join one and also i think what's so great about dao's is like it's not like traditional companies where i can only you know it's like so monogamous like i can only work for one company um but you can actually be a contributor to multiple dows and so yeah polly dalmarus pauline talmers yeah agree um so uh please redown right a lot of awesome things said about it um i like the phrase that pleaser dao is the people's louvre of the 21st century what do you think about that well that's high praise um i mean yeah i think you know really the concept behind pleaser now is so simple it's just um exploring the idea of collective ownership and so why it was such a big deal when it happened at the time is because you know when i was auctioning off nft it wasn't news that an nft could be selling for like you know half a million dollars there were a bunch of entities that sold for more than what mine went for but the reason why people paid attention to it is because um before that there were only sort of like individual collectors who are coming in and you know being the power players of the game right and that's very sort of akin to what we can see in traditional art today it's just you know it's a game of like very very wealthy individuals who can sort of like own certain pieces of art and so when pleaser dow came in it's sort of and because you know they used a gnosis safe which is like an app um a decentralized app that allows people to like pull money together and you know it's like kind of like a shared bank account on the blockchain and so using this kind of technology it's obviously like you know pretty like secure and you know you can trust it and then so people started realizing oh it doesn't have like you know you can do more if you come together instead of like one person like you know i'm sure none of us here probably can afford to spend like half a million dollars on an nft but if we all put in a little money together then we can and that really was sort of like the aha moment for you know when people realized like what pleaser dao was doing was such a big deal yeah um another thing that blizzardow pioneered um is like getting behind some really awesome like freedom and justice minded um social causes like um the the stand with asians movement and i know right now you guys are working um with the free rostow um so yeah talk to me a little bit about why the nft movement is like positioned to do some of this stuff um and social good and you know um yeah curious if there are like other social issues that you're curious about like diving into with future stuff um i mean well i think there's so many social issues that i care about if i could i wish that i could address like every single one of them and i i'm trying to slowly you know so my first nft obviously i created the stand with asians community fund and so we so all of that like you know half million dollars um was donated and spread across like a bunch of different organizations like 24 organizations actually and each of them received a 25 000 grand and you know recently um the like they all filed back reports on saying like you know sort of like what was impacted and um i read and apparently over 93 like it was like um over 93 000 people's lives were impacted as a you know result of that donation um and then you know following that i also partnered with like fortune magazine um and then uh we created like the fortune pleaser fund which specifically you know um donates to um causes that help like free journalism and you know obviously being like fortune um is like they are journalism um but i think uh so you know luckily like my first sale kind of like really inspired all the members of pleaser dow to actually care about you know like making positive social impact and you know like charitable causes and so that's kind of just become one of the main pillars of what the dao like seeks after you know so when they went out for the edward snowden nft it's because it supports um freedom of the press and you know they bought the tor project which is also a non-profit we obviously support nadia's work being that she supports you know so many great causes in social justice um and you know internet privacy is a huge thing that they care about as well and it's really just i think it's the culmination of a bunch of people who have benefited from cryptocurrency um and want to sort of give back and also spread positivity around crypto because you know on the other side there's a lot of people like saying to scam and you know all this kind of stuff and yeah like this technology is revolutionary but it will sort of depend on the like the hands of the people or the intentions of the people behind it so you know if there are bad actors in the space well that's just humanity and society in general we can't sort of prevent that but what we can do is do our best to try to inspire more people to do better and i think that's something that you know is really important to me and like my personal values and why i do what i do today and hopefully pleaser dao will follow as well yeah no that's awesome um amazing to see all the good work that you guys are doing um and definitely i think inspiring others in the space on a similar note um you know in crypto i think we see um a big battle for like ideas maybe more of a cultural battle um and uh good faith is something that a lot of new people in the space like are not always gifting us um right it's cool that nft sales can be used for all of these amazing like charity social good causes um but there can be like a dark side to um uncensorability as well um you know capital sometimes doesn't always care about the artists um you know there's because it's so permissionless you can have maybe like hate groups like use nfts for a lot of ways um so i don't know how do you think about like creating healthy norms in communities um toward against this sort of stuff i mean i don't know i always try to remain optimistic and yeah you know as i was previously saying it's just like there's always going to be bad people on earth i think that's just like a matter of like life um but i think sort of you know at least through my story um it obviously seems to have resonated with a lot of people and has inspired people to like be better and you know look at crypto differently as well you know it's like i think so much of our like the reporting around nft sales and stuff revolves around how much like this nft sold for and everything but you know like if there's any kind so i think that's sort of also how i got my start too they're just like oh my god this energy sold for half a million dollars but now that i have this platform and voice um people are and when i make you know sort of large sum donations um obviously you know what the like uh asian um organizations like i could see the impact but i don't always know if that has you know a direct impact or not but i think what's most important is that these what i call chad donations are causing people to actually pay attention to what i'm saying and that's the most important part of this is that i want you guys to be like okay we're actually paying attention to this girl because either something about money but then what i'm saying is more important part is that you know if you or anybody else is like first obviously take care of yourself first don't go like you know start donating all your money if like you're going to be starving as well um but if we're all sort of lucky enough to be in like a post-scarcity mindset or have access to give back or you know if people make money so easily and like a crypto bull run and so it doesn't hurt to share that with other people especially people who aren't you know i think it takes a certain type of privilege to even have access to crypto right like you need first of all like access to internet um be just living in a first world in general and then so if we can use that and then help sort of amplify that to people in corners of the world who don't have access to that um that's something that is really important to me and makes everything that i'm doing worth it yeah um so the future of nfts right this is just the beginning wondering in five years do you have any predictions about um i don't know what's what's still gonna be big like what maybe what projects might have made the most societal impact um yeah any hop takes five years man it's really hard to say because i feel like in crypto everything changes like every other day but what i do know and this circles back to my original point is that nft is a technology is going to stick around for a while nobody knows which projects are gonna stick around um but uh you know i don't think the blockchain is going anywhere and so i don't know like i always joke about like the fact that you know our passports should be nfts in the future like um let's all agree that we never want to go to dmv again so our driver's licenses should be nfts you know like um and hopefully we're not even using the term nfts anymore because it's just gonna be like the internet that's so like ingrained in our lives that it's not even a thing that sticks out yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense um so it's an incredible moment for people breaking into web 3 right now what advice would you give to like creatives or maybe people coming from web 2 your type of background they want to make the leap into the space like what have you learned um i think honestly my advice is just like um you should definitely be participating right now like whether or not it's just like a part-time thing or a full-time thing like the opportunity cost of just not you know joining web3 especially at this point in time is just going to be so large i mean you know i would love to think oh i'm the best animator in the world i'm obviously not and the only reason why i can be opened up to so many opportunities is because i just happen to be in the right place at the right time and so um that's just to say that the space is so early right now you know not all the top talent has come into the space yet so this is literally your chance to come in and if you're doing cool work people will support it yeah um and if you're coming into the space um there's a lot of pain points still it is very early that's a good point um so curious to hear like what are some of the web 3 challenges that you've encountered or that you would tell people who are coming in that they shouldn't expect um you know i've heard you talk a little bit about like some of the like struggles with infrastructure like wallets and metamasks so yeah i'm just curious like what would you want to see in future versions of like wallets and infrastructure for onboarding people into the nft space um yeah i mean you know i i think i was like quoted in an article once that i was saying that web 3 is like being held together by duct tape right now and that is absolutely a fact it's just anybody who's actually been in the space and used it as as wonderful as the technology is because it is so early you know like uh i don't know like metamask and ledger and chrome like that trio combination is just like actually a nightmare um for anybody who's tried to use it um and i think competition is healthy you know like for some sometimes like you know right now it's like if i'm trying to um like uh sorry like suggest you know hardware wallets or hot wallets to people i only have like ledger and metamask because there's no competition right and so um you know i think that's just a matter of time it's just because we're so early right now and so yeah hopefully at least on the user experience end a lot of those things are going to improve um and then not to say like i would love to be able to see nfts in my wallet as in on like so if anybody's used like phantom like on solano for example you can see nfts there and i feel like you know for example like rainbows doing this so they're like a wallet um you know so yeah i just think competition is healthy and i'm looking forward to seeing um sort of like the competition advancing like the technology yeah for sure and maybe we'll see some stuff come out of the hackathon this weekend so yeah nfts um so before we bring uh nutty and michael back on stage i'm gonna ask one last question and i'm gonna actually steal it from from them because i really liked it um a better world so i hear this throughout a lot of the stuff that you're working on i'm getting the sense that you also may have a vision for a better world and how the work that you do with nfts and dows may weave into that um so yeah what's your a better world i think you know like i always talk about the state of flow and you know i'm somebody who's like fortunate enough now that i can be in a situation where but i have gone through the path of like working for other people or like executing other people's visions and that's always you know sort of like going to be a thing but you know like thinking very optimistically if things like universal basic income existed then i think that will just you know without us having to worry about literally surviving or paying rent it's just going to allow so much more brain space for us to be in the state of flow and you you know the work that you produce like in the state of flow is like thousand times better than the work that you produce otherwise and so i think the better world that i'm thinking of super duper hypothetical and ideal is that you know everybody is guaranteed sort of like some kind of basic income and so they can use their free time to really like expand on things that you know everybody's creative right like we talk about artists like i'm an artist but that doesn't mean only artists are creative like if you're a coder your writer your lawyer like every human is ultimately creative and you know they produce the best work when they're in the creative state of flow and so in each sort of vertical that everybody's working in like just imagine the world like operating on like 10 times more creativity than they can just because people are no longer having to worry about you know like paying their next meal or month's rent um so that's how i think about a better world love it better world more beautiful world cool um well thank you so i think we're gonna take the last 10 minutes or so and do