The Boston Blockchain Podcast EP 5 | Mahlon Williams and Block Jocks

[Music] cubic Labs presents Boston blockchain week stepping into the future celebrating the creators innovators and heroes of blockchain and web3 I'm Mike Joshua from Mudhouse media reporting from Boston blockchain week 2022 presented by cubic Labs with me right now Marlon Williams founder of block jocks welcome Allen thank you thank you give us a little idea of what block jocks is all about block jocks is a digital distribution platform that allows us to distribute our creative nft artwork that fuses Sports pop culture anything relevant in a very Whimsical and in most cases comic book style leveraging the vast Network that we have of Marvel and DC comic book artists that are eager to do something different and create unique artwork it's fantastic so what's your connection here with Boston blockchain week I live in the Boston area and we've established a business over the last 15 plus years of selling Sports art very Whimsical and funny clever witty Sports art um it's a fusion of Fine Art meets Sports posters but it's done in such a way that captures the culture and the history of the region in a very relevant fashion but also makes it appeal to a sports fan so one of the unique things about our product that we make in the business and the clientele that we attract we might get a Harvard Professor who knows nothing about sports and might wear an outdated Patriot Jersey to a Super Bowl party but doesn't know who the players jersey she's wearing or he or she is wearing but they appreciate the art because of the uh the homage that it is to Fine Art and things that they are familiar with but it's also credible to a sports fan now typically these two audience never mix never the two-shell mix but we do it in such a way that it appeals to both which widens our audience and allows us to make a lot of people very happy so we're doing on the Block jock side what we're doing is we're taking that same approach but we're doing it in a very digital fashion and I think our uniqueness because we've been in the digital art space since its Inception in the late 90s it was a very small pivot for us to create nfts that utilize our creative Acumen in a way that made the product that fans would respond to but only in the digital fashion and because we have a history of selling physical product in the real world selling it in digitally I think we stand out simply because what we do we've sort of created this space that no one else occupies and we've drawn a lot of attention to ourselves so when you see our work it immediately warrants attention let's talk a little bit about the importance of Boston blockchain week and why it's so vital to have events like this well this space is growing so rapidly and it's moving away from the center like the big bang and it's going in all directions and I think that the most interesting part for me is the creativity not necessarily in the final product that's being sold but how people are using the technology to make everyone's lives better or they're using it in a way that solves problems that we had previously or they're simply using it in a way that allows new problems to arrive but they're able to do something completely different than what's been done in the past and I think that that's the part that excites me is that the book of how this should be used is still being written and there is no there is no one blueprint that applies to everybody and I think that you need pockets of or Pockets around the country or around the world or communities if you will that help engage folks that are active in this space because you know if the folks that are imagine if you know Steve Jobs and you know Bill Gates you know who knew each other and even though they're competing against each other but imagine if you know they operated in a vacuum and they didn't you know draw inspiration from each other then no telling where we would be right now so I think that in this space because everyone is trying to push the envelope to free to figure out how this technology is going to be used and how and trying to create a model where the company that they have created uh can exist in this space and and be different from other companies that are in the space that is is fascinating to me and we're hoping to to do it in a very different way certainly not to the degree that some of these other players are doing it but I think that it's important to have these Community Gatherings because that is what continues to add fuel to the fire Marlon tell us uh what's what's exciting right now uh for you at block jocks what's what's going on what do you pump about what are you rolling out next okay well we have our Marketplace that we created that is our means of Distributing our own artwork um but we we had to build it from from scratch because the other marketplaces that existed didn't offer the things that we needed or didn't cater to a true collaborative creation environment meaning when you meant an nft typically those the revenue goes back to the company or the entity that meant it as well as the royalty Revenue we needed to be able to pay all of our collaborators not only on the primary cell but also on the secondary royalty we needed it to be fractionalized payments at the point of sale and we needed to do it in a way where blockchucks never took custody of the revenue of our business partners so we had to build a platform that would allow us to configure the smart contracts with a easy graphical user interface and not be reliant on having to program in solidity but in addition to that we needed to be blockchain agnostic so that we could choose to use polygon choose to use ethereum once the gas fees came down after the merge or choose to use binance or some of the other evm compatible chains and now we're looking at you know some polka dot compatible chains as well because we want to be able to make sure that wherever there's the opportunity we want to be able to release projects on those particular chains and not be Reliant specifically on one well then how do people get in touch with you and or block jocks you can reach out to us at blockjox.io um you can certainly email me if you like my name is marlin m-a-h-l-o-n blockjocs.io you can pop into one of our Boston area stores for I love Boston Sports and while I might never be there but you can certainly get my card and reach me uh through my cell phone there awesome Marlin thank you so much thank you [Music] for more on Boston blockchain week go to bostonblockchainweek.com for more about cubic Labs go to cubiclabs.com