VAULT3D: Jihoz-Empowering Players and Pioneering Digital Nations through Axie Infinity

Original Recording Date: November 26th, 2021

Join us at the forefront of gaming innovation with special guest, Jihoz, the visionary co-founder of Axie Infinity. In a world where digital assets are revolutionizing play, we explore the transition from avid gamer to blockchain pioneer. Discover how Axie Infinity is reshaping the gaming landscape by empowering players with true ownership of in-game assets and pioneering a community-driven economy. This episode promises to be a treasure trove of insights for enthusiasts and skeptics alike, challenging the conventional wisdom of work and play in the digital age.

In the next part of our conversation, we discuss the balance between guiding newcomers and fostering a culture of exploration, the integration of NFTs into mainstream gaming, and the importance of accountability in the burgeoning Web3 culture. We address the skepticism surrounding NFTs head-on, discussing the impact of learning through experience and how Axie Infinity is a vanguard in the educational frontier of the crypto economy.

Finally, we look at the future of Web3 gaming, examining the exciting possibilities and challenges of scaling a close-knit community into a thriving digital nation. Our conversation spans new tools fostering token-based engagement, the potential of blockchain ecosystems to disrupt traditional gaming models, and the strategic vision behind Axie Infinity's Ronin sidechain. Tune in for a thought-provoking session that will leave you contemplating the transformative power of Web3 has on the gaming community.

Jihoz Socials:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie

Axie Infinity:
Website: https://axieinfinity.com/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/axieinfinity

SHILLR:

Website: https://www.shillr.xyz
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/shillrxyz
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shillrxyz
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shillrxyz

Music by 800DB

Twitter: https://twitter.com/800dbmusic

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

This is Boone and you're listening to Vaulted, a Web3 podcast series from the Schiller Archives. This episode was originally recorded on November 26, 2021 and features GEO, the founder of Axie Infinity. In this episode, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in Web3 gaming, the advent of community-centric models, the potential for Web3 technologies to reshape economies and work, and much more. As always, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon for financial advice. Boone and guests may own NFTs discussed Now. It's time to grab some coffee and dive in this conversation with GEO. Want to give you the opportunity to give a brief intro. Mike, who are you? What do you do? Man?

Speaker 2: 0:47

Yeah, sure, so I'm GEO. I'm a co-founder of Axie Infinity in SkyMavis. So, yeah, I'm a lifelong gamer, a lifelong collector. I grew up collecting insects and fossils with my father. I grew up playing games like Starcraft, diablo, world of Warcraft. I got sent away actually to boarding school because I was playing so much WoW. So, yeah, you know, I, with Axie, I do a lot of the community and economy related stuff. For those of you that aren't familiar with Axie, axie is a game that was designed to introduce the world to crypto and blockchain. It's kind of similar to games you might have grown up playing like. There are these digital pets. They're cute, you can battle them, you can collect them, you can even breed them. Axie is different from a traditional game in that right, like all of the game, assets and items and resources come with digital property rights, meaning that you can sell them to anyone anywhere in the world, and there are these free markets attached to the game.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Gotcha man, and you know I feel like a dunce for doing this, but I realized it like I called you John before. It is just I apologize for that man. Yeah, dude, I enjoy that man. So Axie was something that for someone like me I joined the Web3 community probably around March February and March is really around when I started getting curious and this was something that kept popping onto my radar. And as I was learning this, I got just for your content, I got onboarded through.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Beeple's massive sale was something that we literally it's what sparked my curiosity and, diving down the rabbit hole started looking at crypto art, started looking at all these other things and in the back of my mind I said, man, what would gaming in NFTs and this new, like wild concept look like? What would that be? And then Axie Infinity came on my radar. I said this is, this is fascinating, and I almost, I almost like kicked myself for not like getting involved when I actually had had the Ethereum. But I just didn't really quite understand it.

Speaker 1: 3:12

You know, at the time, you know, for the time being and I think it's one of the blessings and curses about Web3 is that like it's so there's, it's almost like shiny object syndrome like it's. Like there's so many different, like cool things happening. Like what do you know? What do I even focus my attention on, because there's only so many hours during the day, you know. So want to want to go a little bit further back. Like what when it came to? Like starting Axie when was Axie officially started, you know? And like what was like the process? Like finding some of the people that you're involved with today, or like the I guess, the founding team, if you will.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:47

So Axie started in 2017. So there are two guys that I think you can kind of you know they call the original founders of Axie Infinity Trun and Masmune, and so I actually had met Trun through the CryptoKitties community. So a lot of the original Axie players, community members, are from from that, from the Axie or from the CryptoKitties community. So, yeah, I actually I found out about Axie, you know, in March of 2018, I came in as a community member. I bought three Axies.

Speaker 2: 4:32

I thought it was super cute and then, like a combination of very like an actual clattable, with also this utility aspect where you could actually use it to play in a game, it really made a lot of sense to me. So I, you know, but I found that as a community member, I bought three Axies and I started to ask very like, okay, what do we do now? Like how do we get to the next step? So that's how, yeah, that's how I found out about Axie, right, I think. And so it's always been a, you know, a project where community members are coming in and, you know, materially contributing to the future direction of the project. That's awesome, man.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I mean, and so when? So you went from. So you had that's a really cool story that I had no idea. So you started as a community member. I mean, you started, you bought a couple Axies, like you know, contributed, worked your way up. Like what did the? When did it become? Like less of, like a? I want, I just want to play Axie of like man, I want to be a founder, I want to be play a more important role, if you will Sure.

Speaker 2: 5:36

It was. It was definitely a gradual process, I think, but you know, within two months of having found out about Axie, I had given my parents, given my dog, way to my parents and moved to Vietnam. So so I was kind of like you know, it was a gradual process, but also I think I got like pretty into it really quickly, yeah. So yeah, and I think that's what happens with these Web3 rabbit holes, and I think Axie is, I think, the largest of these rabbit holes where I thought that it was a really special opportunity. I was someone who grew up, you know, I was grew up trying to make money in games and was always running into issues and getting banned and having to get to us violations and right, and it was just like, okay, what if there was a game that actually encouraged the player on the economy and right, instead of trying to set up all these roadblocks actively right developed with this Yep? So, yeah, you know, I thought it was a huge opportunity.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Yeah. So I mean, was that what was like playing Axie? Was that like the primary driver for you to like move to Vietnam, or like? Was it just like or was?

Speaker 2: 6:50

that separate, to be with the other two, with the other, with the rest of the team, right? So Trung and I was talking about earlier Airbnb.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Yeah, Got it Okay, that that makes a lot of sense. I said that there's no way that that was like coincidence. I wanted to make it Wanted to clarify that um, and I mean so you went from community member now you're now your founder, like I mean. So it took, like I've seen you know, only for what I've seen and some of the charts I've looked at like it looks like a lot of the most like explosive growth from axi came really this year, you know, in 2021.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So when it, you know, when it comes to like, when it came to the years prior to that, like, you had it like 2017, that was also around the time when, when crypto punks were were were free. You know there wasn't really any hype around it, but kind of tell me like is. And I Asked this question because right now it's very easy at least for someone like me who just discovered about web3 and NFTs like To get into it because there's so much attention, there's so much volume being traded and just compared to the amount of wallets is it's unbelievable the dollar signs that are Flowing through the system. But in 2017 that obviously wasn't the case, you know. So I guess I I'm curious like what kept you like, like what were some of the small like wins, that like kept the team moving forward, like when there wasn't as much attention as there was today.

Speaker 2: 8:12

If that makes sense, I Think what we saw that was very special were community members stepping up and doing amazing things, and Even one actually was small. We had this very passionate, very loyal, very engaged and creative community that was doing amazing things and right. So we, we thought, okay, it's true, community members are doing these things right, getting tattoos and making music videos, you know basically, you know basically dedicating their lives and, and you know, spending Hours per day just hanging out, chatting, giving feedback, giving ideas. Sure, sure, people are doing, are disengaged when the community is this small. What would happen if we got to this milestone?

Speaker 2: 9:03

So I think, I think that's what, you know, gave us hope. And it was also that we knew that, okay, once we have battles right, once we have scalable infrastructure, and we're say, it's still like that right, there's still, yeah, it's still so hard to get it, yeah, yeah, we're always kind of like, okay, this, this, and we have this next Developing goal that will unlock this Right and unlock these types of new users. Sure, and we're still, we're still on that stage where, right, we're working on Battles v2 and that will also allow anyone to try axi or a try demo or with freestarter axes. Do you think that that's Unlock huge, huge amounts of growth.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Okay and all good, yeah, I.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Got y'all. Good yeah, can you? Can you just see me Sorry, yeah, yeah, no, you're gonna find our computer, um yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Gotcha man. So and us, okay, okay, yeah, cool, cool, cool, cool. Sorry, I think so where we at was, like you know, just, you're consistent, like looking out, like you know, some of the the battle 2.0's are like looking for newer ways to onboard. You know when now, when it comes to so, from my lens, you know the way I see East, for I want to shift directions a little bit to eSports Is, you know, the current model with eSports? It doesn't really look that sustainable from the outside.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Looking in now, I'm not in the financial meetings, I'm not in you know a lot of like the inner workings of, like what happens, and there's very little about eSports. It's actually like shared, you know knowledge or that's like public knowledge. When it comes Any sort of deals like I think the last, the biggest deal that I recognized was TSM's, or, you know, ftx, the, with the naming rights for TSM. But the problem that I see is that eSports is not Sustainable like it. There's not really a sustainable model like you have. You have sponsorship revenue which is dependent upon wins. You have merch, like cool, you have content, but all of those, all of those you could argue, are very volatile and there's not much consistency to it and so Do you see like, when it comes to like web 3 gaming and eSports, do you see games like actually like changing that model and flipping on its head? I'm right, I just want to get some of your thoughts about, like what you envision, you know, I guess, the next generation of eSports to look like with web 3 technology.

Speaker 2: 11:50

So I think what we're doing with actually is we're just, we're we're democratizing eSports, we're making it, we're creating a system where it's not the earning is not constrained to the top point one person and right. So we've created the system where there are people, there are right collectors, whales, neculators, who right there, trading their capital or right, power, respect and time within our economy. Traditionally, when people want to spend, like spend for those reasons, that's all going to the game developer. But we basically created a system where, when people are spending yeah, when people are spending within the ecosystem, that is going to other members of the ecosystem. So it doesn't. It's basically is creating a system where eSports, right and this and this ability to sustain yourself by playing a game it's not being, it's being subsidized by spenders and consumers, rather than right just solely focusing on in advertising or or merch and things like that.

Speaker 2: 12:58

So this is a different model. Okay, it's a. It's a model where we, as the game developers, are basically sharing More of the of the fruits of the ecosystem with our community. We think that it's also a good business decision, because you basically get a game that's much larger than it would be if you have a more closed economy, so that this is the way that we're thinking about it. We also, we even within axi right, we do have four minutes and we do have sponsors, but the cool thing is to we could we're the primary sponsor Right where we're getting away access tokens. Basically, access tokens are kind of like little pieces of our ecosystem and they're backed by Right the fees and generated by by the Indian got it. So it's it's a new model and it's it's quite experimental, but we think that'll work. And we were. We were, I believe, sponsoring around 50 Tournaments over the next couple of months and the Eastward scene is definitely growing than axi, but it still definitely early days.

Speaker 1: 14:07

That's insane to me, you know, because I look at, I Mean there's a lot of, there's a lot of publishers that that do very little of that. Like you'll see, publishers Maybe they'll comp like plane tickets for you know, for a certain X percentage of the teams, or they'll comp certain parts of you know the travel for these events and they'll they'll put up the events but not actually fully funding. You know some of these teams or sponsoring them in a big way and I think that's massive. Now Question you know when it?

Speaker 1: 14:37

Because we have like one thing I have noticed it's been very odd to me, but I'm starting to learn more as I surfed Twitter a little bit more is a lot of AAA Game devs have this really strong backlash Against web3. Like there is, like it's almost like they're just as passionate against it as I would say a lot like everyone, and my, I guess, twitter sphere is passionate for web3. Like how do you see like a new era of like game developers playing with the current way it is? I mean, this just seems like a massive undertaking, sure.

Speaker 2: 15:14

I think that it depends on Trailblazers like SkyMavis to show the path forward, to show the playbook. There will always be some people, I think, that are afraid of new technologies, but I think there are some people. I think a healthy skepticism is important. I'm skeptical of a lot of NFT projects and a lot of NFT games that are coming out, but I think it's a question around education and having fun ways for people to go down the rabbit hole. That's, in essence, what we're building with. Axie is a gamified rabbit hole into the world of Web3, because we understand that we didn't understand Web3 until we started actually breeding crypto-kitties and feeling that sense of ownership and seeing what a community of Howard gave Axie looked like.

Speaker 2: 16:14

I think that we need to show the path forward. We need to do a better job also educating. I also think that it's a new way of building games and I think it can be threatening to people from the traditional path. I think that also, there are some people who are purists and that they think that games should only be about fun for the player. I guess there's. Obviously these developers are making a lot of money from these audiences. I think for us, our goal is that who's to say that we're the only ones creating value in the network that should be rewarded with monetary value, and that the creators, that are the players that are creating value, they should only be rewarded with these types of value. Capital is just one form of value. There are many forms of value. It's to us. We just see it as another carrot that we can use in our tool book.

Speaker 1: 17:24

Yeah, I mean because, I'll tell you, halo recently just changed it for me because it just released and I bought the battle pass. Since I came in here, I never bought a weapon skin for a video. I'm a first person shooter guy. I enjoy Call of Duty. I grew up with Call of Duty, grew up with Halo.

Speaker 1: 17:49

I started playing Valorant and I started spending all this money on Valorant skins I probably spent close to $1,000, but it dawned on me in this process that I actually don't own these assets. I paid all this money for the right to use them, but I can't take them anywhere with me as a gamer like that. It started introducing a lot of new trains of thoughts. I see what Axie's doing and it's got a thing. I'm not sure what it's doing. It's got its own model.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Then I look at first person shooter games and I said what does NFTs look like? Or what does Web 3 look like? When it comes to these massive behemoth game publishers, can they adapt? How do they adapt? What needs to be undone, what needs to be implemented for them to actually do it?

Speaker 1: 18:41

I'll tell you where I struggle a lot with NFTs and I wanted to get your take on this is that there's a culture of Web 3 that I really enjoy, that people are accountable for their actions. It's this self-custody culture over. I'm going to rely on someone else to do something for me and also take accountability when something messes up. I struggle with understanding when and how to educate people. It's like how much do I dangle the carrot for them to go down the rabbit hole versus how much do I kind of coddle them as they're entering towards the rabbit hole. You know what I mean. I just don't want to tell people all the answers. I want them to find their own way, because I believe genuinely that they're going to find their own niche, because they found ways to go down the rabbit hole that were meaningful to them.

Speaker 2: 19:31

Sure, I think when I talk to people that are interested in learning, I try to think of myself as an aggregator of the correct information, or at least the information that I've found to be useful to myself, because there's a lot of misinformation out there around Web 3 if you're just search learning through Google searches. Oftentimes I see myself as an aggregator, where I'm like, hey, this was helpful around my thinking around this and recommending articles, blogs, youtube, great YouTubers, things like that. But I also think that this is why Axi is so powerful is that by playing Axi Infinity, you learn how to right. If you can just sell someone on deciding to go down this path of becoming an Axi player, you then are actually also going to teach them how to download a digital wallet, acquire cryptocurrency, even use a decentralized exchange, provide liquidity, learn about impermanent loss, what is a governance token. I think that's also why Axi is powerful is that it itself is a school for crypto.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Gotcha. That's a pretty fun way to learn. In my opinion, that's a great solution Because I've noticed even with myself. It's just like I stopped saying NFTs or some of the common like threatening buzzwords and I just start talking about ways that it benefits, like some of the examples that it can actually do, or some real life, tangible things that are actually meaningful to people.

Speaker 2: 21:22

It's right. This is really important for founders. When you're talking about your product, we need to talk about what are the benefits of Web3?, what are the benefits of our products? Those are the ways that people are going to get hooked and you're like, okay, this is something that I need to go and get into People who are saying, oh the friction, it was too difficult. These are people that are not interested. If that makes sense, you need to catch their interest and their attention before you ask them to do all these crazy things. That's also why Axi is so powerful, in my opinion, because people read these headlines or it's like right, and people are making money playing a game. This is a dream, right, this is a dream come true. It's like every kid proving their mother wrong. It has that mimetic aspect.

Speaker 1: 22:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and you touched on a really good point of, like it were, a very headline driven culture. We're in this thing where I and I'm guilty of it myself until I tripped down this rabbit hole and I came down Web3. I was one of the people who, just if it was of mild interest, I would just read the headline and I'd keep it moving. But this has been the one thing that's actually forced me to actually read and I think that is an incredibly important thing of people. It's weird. It's like people who are. I think you hit the nail on the head with grabbing their attention and then you can explain it, because in the beginning, I was like an evangelist stumping everyone on the head with this digital Bible. That was just like you need to figure this out and you need to understand this, understand it. Telling people they need to do something is just going to make them run the opposite way. You know like. Yeah, sorry, I think I could cut out there for just a second, but yeah, I think that's a great way to do that. So, when it comes to like, this is something that was really fascinating.

Speaker 1: 23:23

So, as of right now, I know your Discord has like reached the max capacity, which is absolutely fascinating. Not many people have been able to achieve that. So Discord is currently closed off, and what I also learned from a Kevin Rose podcast where he was interviewing one of the people from it was a I can't remember what it was called, but it was from a some sort of guild where they were literally loaning out axes to onboard new players. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that for, like, people that maybe they were like wanting to invest but they don't really have the money to invest? 500, you know to however much it is now, you know of, however however many theorem it takes to get involved, just as a starter pack, like. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit more, because I found that that was like a really fascinating way to onboard people into this.

Speaker 2: 24:12

So there is a system called the scholarship system where people who cannot afford to play Axi Infinity, because axes are in the hundred plus dollars now each and you need three of them, so axes are basically expensive. You need axes to play the. Why are they expensive? Well, it comes down to the fact that you can actually earn tokens of real value with them. So axes became expensive and then, you know, so the people that could actually be helped by this game were being priced out. And then these guilds, in many cases, kind of rose to the occasion where they started to accumulate axes and then lend them out to people who couldn't afford them. And these, right, the scholar and the guild would agree to a kind of a it's kind of like an income sharing agreement where, yeah, yeah, basically the guild were earn a percentage of the tokens earned by the scholar while while using those axes. So it was. It was amazing. It came from the community, wasn't something that we necessarily anticipated, but it was a pretty good solution to the issue of accessibility.

Speaker 2: 25:33

Also say that one of the issues with this is that you still we, there's still people who are interested in Axi but are insured that they want to go right, like commit to right someone's kind of you know, scholar or it's kind of like being almost like an employee or something. So, yeah, yeah, a little bit intense for some people. There are a lot of, you know they want to try the game and see if it's fun before they even before they even buy their own team. So we're also working on an upgraded battle system where anyone will be able to try to game with three free starter axes. They might not be able to earn, but they'll kind of be able to fall in love with the universe mechanics before they make any economic decisions.

Speaker 2: 26:15

Right now. If you want, if even if you got a team of axes and you have the you know, $400 plus or whatever, you have to figure out, okay, what team do I want to buy and how can and then? So then you have to kind of like watch YouTube, learn the mechanics of the game right like see what people are using in the meta and before you make a decision, right it's it's a there are a lot of barriers, but I think that's awesome because we have 2.8 billion 2.8 million players, even with all these barriers.

Speaker 2: 26:45

what will happen when they're progressively lowered?

Speaker 1: 26:50

Dude and, and I can't remember what country it was, but I know it's one of the main primary sources of income for an entire country.

Speaker 2: 26:59

It's just in the Philippines. The Philippines, yeah, I'm quite large, so we have hundreds of thousands of players in the Philippines. If not, that's insane.

Speaker 1: 27:09

That's actually insane, and so I just I'm almost curious about like what that does. Like if you know, if a lot of the people that are normally in traditional labor in the Philippines are now playing a video game and making a way healthier living, like what that actually? Like what that actually does to the Philippines like economy, like does it? Are they struggling for workers? Are they like raising wages? Are they doing this because it scratches on a lot, a lot larger of a problem. Like they're not, I guess, not larger of a problem, but just a larger, I guess, topic of like what does that actually do to an entire country's impact? And I, I just imagine that y'all didn't have that in mind when you started this either.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Right, Well, I think a lot of the people who are being helped by this. They're unemployed or underemployed and I think, okay, right, initially right. We're dealing with automation and the consequences of automation, where a robot, sir right, coming for the jobs and destroying a lot of jobs and a lot of physical jobs are being destroyed through the pandemic and never returning. So right, I think, actually is helping the people who have basically been automated away from labor. So I think it's an answer to what is the future work look like now in a kind of a post industrial society.

Speaker 1: 28:28

I wrote that, yeah, I mean that, yeah, because it's I've all. I've also had that. I've also had that curiosity of like what is this, like, what does that mean? Because I know, even here in the States, like you're seeing a lot of the same things, like people got priced out especially the food industry is really tough, a lot of jobs. You really found what was completely what was relevant, what was irrelevant.

Speaker 1: 28:50

For a lot of corporate workers, you know, like myself, it was a very good benefit. Like there was a lot of things that came from, came to the corporate environment with a lot more flexibility, working remotely, but there's an entire subset of the country that felt the burn a lot deeper or a lot more than we did. So I find that really insane. Because I also see that even with, like, fast food restaurants, like they can't hardly hire anybody, you know, like they can't you know, in this post, covid, you know system, like they can't hire enough people because they're making more money, you know, not working there than they were, you know, with a regular corporate job. I just find that incredibly like I find that incredibly fascinating.

Speaker 1: 29:33

So one of the one of the switch gears a little bit as well, like you know? What do you? You know? I guess I want to talk about some like personal interest of yours, like what I know. You said you were skeptical of some NFT projects, like what is something that, like, you're looking into, or like something that is your, some things that, like you're like, are a big favorite of yours. You know, whether it's gaming, whether it's PFS, whether it's just art in general, I'm always like to take it all over the collector side of people on here.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Yeah, yeah, and you know so I'm super excited about social coordination tools. So right now, we have a lot of. Finally, we have adoption, where we actually have large communities, and it's like, okay, how do we make sure that we're identifying people who want to contribute and creating ways to scientifically reward them? And how do we maintain a tight knit culture in the community when we have millions of people rather than tens of thousands? It's kind of easy to have a tight knit community when there are a couple hundred people on Riser, but, yeah, it's much easier. And how do you scale while also being remaining special? So that might not be necessarily.

Speaker 2: 30:59

Yeah, so I'm excited about products that solve things like that. Like, we just did a collab land integration within the ACI, discord, and then this basically allows people to claim a role on Discord based on the tokens that they're holding in their wallet. So for me, that's something like super, super cool. Yeah, I mean I'm, in terms of the rest of crypto, like I mean I don't have too much time to look at other stuff and I'm wary of recommending other projects in case, right, people, people kind of like care a lot about what I, what I say. But you know I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know I'm on lookout. I've been looking and I've been investing and looking at, like ACI guilds, for example, and metavert, gotcha that's been, that's been really cool and I'm still thinking about, like, what is the future, what? What does the next generation of NFT games look like? What will will? Will they be successful? Will they be coming next year? Will they be coming two or three years or even further out?

Speaker 1: 32:05

Yeah, I mean you bring up a good point because, like it's for for people who've never built a game, and there's all these NFT, you know, pfp projects launching and you're just like, yeah, we're going to have this game, it's going to be a part of this roadmap. And you know, like like we both know that, like you probably know a lot more than me, but you know, I at least see from the outside that, like making a game is really really tough. Like it is, it is one of the hardest and it's it's one of the hardest and riskiest things to do. You know it's now, it's a very appreciated art form, but it takes a lot of risk and a lot of know-how and a lot of grit to like figure that out. So I'm, you know, unless like a game is like has a like a huge market cap and there's like all these active users onboarding, it's hard for me to really get down with like what does Web 3 games look like? Because I know, out of all the projects, like probably 99% of these people that are going to be making a game as part of their PFP project are going to fail.

Speaker 1: 33:00

I'm because they've never built the game before. You know, and some of them may just get really lucky and it may. Things may just click and they may have the technical know-how or know the right people to bring on board as the project grows, you know, but I guess, when it comes to the different ecosystems, this is very, really what I wanted to touch on. You know, you have, actually, which is built on Ethereum. Now I've been seeing a lot of games with that are being built on, like Unreal Engine being powered on the Solana blockchain, like is there, like I wanted to, because we're talking about, like, the future of, like Web 3 gaming what is your thoughts on, like, some of the Solana blockchain gaming, like, because I've been very curious about that but I haven't really had enough time to, I guess, go deep down the rabbit hole, but it seems like both of them can coexist. But do you, what's your, I guess, what's your overall vibe on that?

Speaker 2: 33:53

Yeah, I think they have a lot to prove. I'm almost tempted to wait for the next bear market before I start to figure out, like you know, who I think of the next generation of games are gonna do well. So it's like I'm almost tempted to just wait and wait for the bear market. Hopefully it comes, hopefully. You know I'm not going to predict one, but you know I also don't need to necessarily have. You know I'm not forced to invest and or have an opinion on any of them. So so I might say that right now it's too difficult to know, because it's a different market environment where people are kind of it's just too easy right now and historically that's not necessarily been a good time to make concentrated bets or opinions on stuff. So, yeah, I'll also say yeah, so with Axi, right, even we so with Ronin.

Speaker 2: 34:52

So we have built our own side chain scaling solution called Ronin. So it's a NFT scaling solution for Ethereum. We built it specifically for Axi. We also want to onboard other games and other IP onto Ronin. It's quite difficult to get at it even right now. Yeah, okay, it's difficult to figure out. You know who's for real, who's going to keep building during your rough times, during tough times. So yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:22

So, like you're wanting that, like, so it's a side chain that you're wanting to onboard more IP, would it be under the Axi umbrella? Would it be like would you basically be bringing on a whole another like just group of developers to build that and what would be the real? I guess what would the relationship be like with Axi?

Speaker 2: 35:39

If you can share, I mean I think there's potential to to bring developers will build on top of Axi and you know great conditional utilities through new experiences. There's also right. There's a chance for us to become the Nintendo or the Eden, the Epic Games right of this, of NFTs, where you know we bring another IP and act as a distribution channel for them.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Gotcha, gotcha, I guess. So you know we it's great to see that Epic, I know, was at least a little bit curious about NFTs and Web3. I know I've seen like they haven't made like an official stance but another CEO is like he has some healthy skepticism and he's he's been on board but he also has some very big concerns, you know, when it comes to being like a distribution network, like how would the Web3, you know, version of a distribution platform would be different from, like Steam or Epic right now?

Speaker 2: 36:38

Sure, so, for in order to make an NFT game, there's a lot of stuff that's required, right? You need a scalable blockchain wallet marketplace. Right? There's all this plumbing and infrastructure. So we basically and then there's also the community aspect. So we believe that Ronin will be the number one place to launch a game, because you get all the stuff that we had to build for Axi. You get that right, and you know that it works because it's working for Axi, whereas nothing else is really battle tested. Or even we have our own Katana. We have our own decentralized exchange now, right? So it's like we get all this stuff because we're we figured out what we needed for Axi and then built it out. We believe that these components are going to be needed for all other NFT games as well. So, yeah, that's you know the idea is to have, and then also you get access to our community, which is the largest it's you know it's larger than anything else out there.

Speaker 1: 37:51

Yeah, it's insane. And now that sounds like it's like you hit the nail on the head there. That's awesome, man. Well, you know, wanted to. You know, outside of some of the stuff that we had discussed. You know what is some of the like? And I asked this question it's almost like a loaded question. But I was actually listening to a podcast and they were talking about when the Mac was like first invented. It was like their idea of the future was literally like people coding recipes or like entering like cookbook recipes into their Macintosh and that was like the most innovative thing at the time that they could think of.

Speaker 1: 38:27

I say that with the context of, like you know, we haven't really been able to discover what Web 3 really has to offer. I feel like we're seeing some of the benefits. It's solving some immediate pains, a lot of immediate problems. But I want to get a little bit into imagination land. But you know, what do you see as far as like axiom, like the next 10 years, like where would you want to see that? And I know, in crypto that's basically like 100 years.

Speaker 2: 38:49

So definitely, I think the eventual, the eventual implications of this is that, okay, if you can create deep social, economic relationships with anyone anywhere in the world, you start to see yourself as part of this community. Right, this community also has culture and entertainment built into it. You start to have all the building blocks of a real nation. So we call, often called axi, a digital nation. Now governments are not starting to reach out to us and you know, and even politicians are starting to get interested. This is almost right, like we have our own. We're kind of almost. I think in the future we have this potential where we may be signing treaties with governments, we may be acquiring land in the physical world. Governments may be even begging us to buy land in the physical world from them as they go bankrupt, from, you know, sovereign debt crises which can be brewing. So I think that this is something that can become far more than a game. This is a community that can become quite powerful in the real world.

Speaker 1: 40:09

Yeah, I mean, that's a thought, but it's also like a fear of like. It's also a like. A strange fear that I've had is, like you know, when it comes to economic crises, like of like, you know, no supply caps, just consistently printing money, never solving the actual debt problem, you know what would actually. It's almost a terrifying. It's like I'm excited but also equally terrified at that thought, you know, because it's a very large scale of like, wow, like this is what we've depended on our entire life, and but when it comes to the future of like web3, like, say that were to happen, you know, say that like a catastrophe.

Speaker 1: 40:43

Economic catastrophe happened globally when it came to our current Dollar system or our current currency, I See actually being a main player. What other players do you see? That is it just? Is it just like a decentralized network of All of this cryptocurrency? Is that like the only currency? Or there are other Projects like yours or other, I guess, communities like yours that play an important role in sustaining that, because, like, it's like okay, where's sustainability when that happens?

Speaker 2: 41:13

Yeah. So what we're seeing right is we're seeing people losing trust in, in, like large institutions, large central institutions, so that can be government. That also means Facebook, apple, netflix, google, amazon. Right, people are losing trust in these large, centralized institutions and this creates a need for Different types of communities and different types of support structures and networks and they they can be different.

Speaker 2: 41:48

It can be difficult, it's gonna be a shaky transition. It's kind of like, right, joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction, yeah, but this is, I think it's the it's. It's just a path that I see is almost inevitable and you know that. So I will used to.

Speaker 2: 42:04

I used to be someone who wanted to be, you know, I wanted to become a politician or a central banker to try and fix the cist break, and then I realized that I would not gonna not gonna be able to do that, and then I just started. I started figuring out what is the next move, and I think people are, throughout the world, having this realization and they will be having this realization over the next 10 years. And but what I will say is that Hopefully, and I think right, like these decentralized communities, these web3 communities, I think they offer an alternative right, a system of structure and support, even In a world where the things that we are traditionally relying on are breaking down. And I think it's it's, it's it potentially right, something that I mean means that, even if right, even if those things Kind of collapse, will still have Some form of stability.

Speaker 1: 43:00

Gotcha, yeah, because I, when you, when you say something like that, it makes me wonder, like, what is? Because, like I, it's the irony of web3 is funny, because I, we're building the plane, as we're flying it, um, but yet we're building it. But our entire community is on twitter, you know, um, you know, like, like, everything is still all of these, like, we're on an eye. I'm like, I use an iphone, um, I have air pods, I have all the. All of these are created from central, from central, uh companies, and so I guess it just begs the question of, like, what does that look like in web3? You know, and I haven't even really thought of that, it's just something that when you mentioned it, it popped into my head of what is a? I guess, what does a bottoms up amazon look like? Or a bottoms up apple look like? You know, is that even gonna happen in a time where we're alive? You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 43:48

That's true. I think the low hanging fruit is around Industries, where there are very strong communities and there are large, the middlemen, that are extracting huge fees. Um, so I think that's why it's like gaming, uh, I think fits that requirement quite well and music fits out requirement quite well. You're like hardware and stuff like that. It's like it, it's, it's. It's maybe a little bit further off.

Speaker 1: 44:17

Yeah, because I still look at, you know, I've I've constantly had the thought of like, do I want to fully decentralized world? You know it's like, do I want everything to? It's like because there is some central like benefits that, like, I really do enjoy. You know, like it's like Maybe, like I guess, for my personal opinion, like maybe I don't really want to push for a fully, I don't know if I want that, you know, um, because that is almost that is terrifying when we get to enjoy.

Speaker 1: 44:42

There's a lot of cool things that are being created by great companies, you know and not, but I would agree with you for the most part, it is a very large level of distrust in the way decisions are made. Um, as I just thought of that, because, yes, it's so, games, music, you know, and just honestly, artists in general. You know we've been seeing this massive like wave of Wow, artists are now getting paid, um, and they just have, they get to make their work once and they could continually make money off that work for the rest of their life. Um, I think that's a fascinating, you know, a fascinating bridge that we've really crossed here. You know, but want to want to start wrapping things up.

Speaker 1: 45:21

I know, I know we had about a 30 minute block and we've gone over. So, uh, you know, jeff, I do want to thank you for coming on, man, and when it comes to I always like to give, uh, give the spotlight to you one more time at the end. There's any sort of advice for someone that's coming into axi, um, wanting to build their own game, any sort of like nugget that, like you've learned when you created this in 2017, that you'd like to share?

Speaker 2: 45:50

I think that this is a space where you need a high level conviction and you need to have really good habits where we're not gonna know you can't really tell they're from initially just finding a project whether it's gonna do well, or you can't even know that about yourself, right, um. But I think that what we want one thing that we need more of and in web3, is we need people with, like amazing habits who, just right, will show up day after day, regardless of market conditions. I think that's what axi axi is a testament to that. Where are we literally? We built it was an overnight success four years into making um. That's right. So, yeah, I think, like what I'll say is rig. Now, it's like you know, the market conditions recently have been so good. We kind of we forget the necessity to show up every day and to be consistent, and that good things take really long time to really long time to marry me.

Speaker 1: 46:55

So yeah, I, I love that and it's to me it's the hardest transition from web2 to web3, because web2 were so polished and it's mature and things are just A lot of things have happened just like instantaneously and people have found a lot of like viral success or a lot of the meme culture and, um, while that's great it to me it just destroys Um like human, like number one, like human innovation, and it destroys like a lot of Like personal growth that needs to be had before you can really achieve some of these levels. Um, you know, but Again, I want to thank you for coming on. If you want people to Uh follow you, you know where's some of the, where's the best place if they want to get in contact with you I'm getting contact with some of your team what's the best place really to find you?

Speaker 2: 47:40

Yeah, so you can find me on twitter at g hoes underscore axi. It's like jih oz underscore axi, underscore axi. Yeah, come to the axi discord. Uh, discordgg slash axi. We've prune it from time to time, uh, step or maybe slots open. Um, yeah, you know there's, there's a lot of. There are a lot of awesome youtubers, axi youtubers and content creators. Uh, both and and and. Twitch streamers. Uh, I think that's one of the awesome things about axi is there's all this kind of you Uh content out there. So if you want to learn more, uh, they do a pretty good job.

Speaker 1: 48:23

Awesome man. Well, hey, again, it's been a pleasure having you on. Um, I'll let you get back to it and hopefully let's get some rest. Man, all right, thanks. Thanks for having me, absolutely. Thank you for listening to the shillard vaulted podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. As we close out today's episode, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite audio platform and leave a five star review to ensure you never miss an episode and to help others discover the vaulted podcast as well. To stay updated on upcoming episodes, as well as our weekly twitter space schedule, be sure to follow us on x, formerly known as twitter, at shillard xyz. Once again, thank you for tuning in and remember, if you're looking for it, Art is everywhere and it's up to us to appreciate and explore the emotions it brings to our lives. Until next time, this is Boone signing off.