The global gaming industry continues to grow in all markets. Blockchain technology in games is powered by NFTs, digital assets that represent game content. Listen to this exciting version with Robert Greig and Josh Jones, Co-Founders of Cornucopias Game, to learn more about the role of NFTs in games.
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USING NFTs IN GAMING
Nadja:Here are some of the NFT news headlines making waves this past week. Quite a bit of interesting tidbits. Luxury jewelry company Tiffany, in conjunction with individual Crypto Punks holders who are leveraging their IP, is releasing a total of 250 in real life pendants, including an NFT of the pendant, which will be sold for 30 ETH each. So that's quite a number. The city of Miami, Florida is releasing a collection of 5000 NFTs in partnership with Time magazine publisher time USA MasterCard and Salesforce. This will confer unique experiences to holders and include exclusive benefits from partners. Interesting to see that Real life integrate place if you're into music and if you caught our first show on the integration of NFTs and music and art and NFTs, UK rock band Muse is releasing an NFT version of their album Will of the People. This will actually be the first ever NFT album to qualify for the UK music charts.
Nadja:Finally, the CEO of the educational publishing house Pearson Education has stated in the company's most recent earnings calls that they are considering utilizing NFTs for royalty purposes in the sale of secondhand books. Apparently, Pearson textbooks typically get resold for up to seven times, so I can imagine that there's quite a royalty opportunity there with NFT integration. All right, so I think we've got quite a bit of people coming in now, so let's get into it.
Hey web3 world, this is Nadja Bester from AdLunam, and you are listening to The Future of NFTs, the show that looks beyond current NFT use cases to what Non-Fungible token technology is evolving into. All this as seen through the eyes and built by the minds of the fascinating guest speakers. And they really are fascinating that we speak to each week a little bit more about AdLunam. AdLunam is building the industry's first IDO Launchpad with Attention Allocation mechanism.
Nadja:
The reason that NFTs are so important to us is because our investor profiles are dynamic NFTs, which powers our engage to earn model by allowing for Fractionalization of Allocation during private and IDO sales. In terms of this new show, The Future of NFTs, this is our third episode and if you've missed any of the others, be sure to join on your favorite podcast streaming platform. We are live every Tuesday and our other show that's been running for quite some time, diving into crypto, is live every Thursday. Join us for both shows as we speak to thought leaders and change makers in this game changing industry. On that note, speaking of thought leaders and change makers, today's episode is all about NFTs in the gaming space. Very exciting topic that I think we all are very eager to learn more about. I am speaking to Cornucopias, a metaverse game that's play to earn, bull to earn ,learn to earn about how they are integrating NFTs into their gameplay and into their game economics.
Nadja:Joining me today are the company's two CEOs, Robert Greg and Josh Jones. I see both of them are in the house. Rob and Josh are both entrepreneurs with decades worth of experience, and they bring into the Web3 space their business analytics, development and marketing skills that they've honed in other industries. Josh is also the cofounder and the stake pool operator of the Cardano powered Staking pool Grow Your Stake, which supports the nonprofit Drop for Drop that increases accessibility to clean water in Africa and Asia. So definitely check that out. It's supporting a worthy cause. He also co-hosts the YouTube show Cardano Chats. And if you'd like to ask the Cornucopias team a question, stay tuned for the end of the show when you can put in a speaker request or inbox your question to the AdLunam Twitter handle on AdLunamInc. All right, so, Josh and Rob, it's lovely to have you guys join us in the show today.
Nadja:I think especially because gameFi and NFT has both been huge topics in the Web3 space this past season, and I'm very keen to get into what the future might look like, especially now that we've had this market downturn. So, over to you. Where are you guys dialing in from today?
Josh:Well, hi. Thanks for the great intro. This is Josh, and I am dialing in from Austin, Texas. In the United States.
Rob:Hello there. I'm actually on holiday in the Canary Island.
Nadja:Oh, wow. Okay. So I'm in the Balkans. Rob, I know that you are from the UK, so that crazy heat wave that you guys had is now, and I'm just doing whatever I can to survive by staying indoors and not going anywhere. I hope the weather that you are having in the Canary Islands is better than what you had in the UK and what I'm having at the moment. All right, so, to kick things off, I've watched a few of your YouTube videos and I really walked away with this sense that you guys are having a lot of fun building Cornucopias and taking your community along with you for this really exciting ride that you're on. There's this really strong sense of team spirit and genuine commitment to product and to community between the two of you. I'm really looking forward to getting more into this and other topics today.
Nadja:So, to start off, I'd love to hear more about your backgrounds, how you got into Web3 and also what's important to you, because I think this trio is often very significant to people's industry origin stories. So, over to you. Let's hear more about Rob and. Josh.
Josh:Sure. The question is of our origin story?
Nadja:Always the best thing to start off with is, why are you here? What made you get into the crazy space we're in?
Josh:You bet. I just wanted to make sure. Okay, so yes, well, Rob and I relevant to your introduction, the grow your steak pool and the show cardano chats. Cardano Chats was started, I haven't done an episode of that in over a year at this point, but I had started that to support the Steak Pool, Grow Your Steak. As a result of that show I was listening to, Charles Hoskinson announced some of the fund winners from the Catalyst project, which is Cardano is basically internal funding mechanism for projects being built on Cardano. I'm listening to the winners of a project, of a round of funding. One of the projects he listed, he said Charles said, oh, Visual Basic studio integration, we really need that. I took note of that and made sure to reach out to that person to try to interview them for Cardano Chats.
Josh:And that was Rob. And we basically got to talk. After the interview , Rob shared with me what he had been researching for the prior six months and some of what he was working on, which was this metaverse based project and game. We continued discussions for about two weeks to a month and ended up launching Cornucopias together. That was a little over a year ago. And we dove in. Both of us completely took the big risk and left our paying jobs and self-funded Cornucopias, at least for the first three months, and took a huge risk and got it launched. And we've been in a force ever since. I'm still amazed to this day at the doors that have opened and the amount that we've accomplished. It's pretty amazing. So that would be my intro. I don't know if Rob wants to add anything. Maybe rob, can you give him a little background on what Cornucopias is?
Rob:Yeah, sure. I've been working on kind of cutting edge technology for the last 30 years. I've always been fascinated in the early days, back in SMS and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and ZigBee, when I had the chance to work on Blockchain and Card, Allen announced that they were opening up to the community back in August 2020, I just jumped at the chance. I was fortunate to be one of the original 50 people to be part of the fund one in Project Catalyst Then, like Josh said, that led on to one of my projects then being funded. But, yeah, I mean, Cornucopias for me at the heart of Cornucopias, and everything that I've tried to do is to connect systems together, be interoperable, but bring in the community. I've been part of the Cardano community. I went in looking at Project Catalyst, thinking I've got a chance here to start working on the Blockchain.
Rob:Actually, I came out the other end thinking, wow. An entire community of self-minded, thinking developers, all led by Charles Hoskinson, with this goal of being really open and commutative. We've kind of taken on that mantle and taken forward now. Our community has just got over 40,000 people in Discord, 40,000 in Twitter, and it's one of the friendliest communities that I've ever seen. It's been a pleasure to be part of this project, Josh.
Nadja:How amazing, guys, to listen to this story. My co-founder and I also came together to start AdLunam because we'd worked at a different time on another project. I know this idea of the synergy between two people when they come together, share a vision, and then use the complementary skills that they both have in order to start something to give fruition to this vision they have. It really sounds like cornucopias in that sense. Not only that, you guys exemplify grabbing the bull by the horns. There's so many opportunities in this industry, if only you go for it. It's not only about being able to be agile enough to take advantage of opportunities, but it really is also, especially from the sounds of it, the power of mind coming together and collectively creating something, which, of course, is also what the industry as a whole is about.
Nadja:It's interesting because it really sounds as though this foundational baseline that I recognize in your community, as I said earlier, really can see it's a very friendly, supportive community. How it sounds that even from the earliest origins in terms of being connected to the Cardano ecosystem and being part of that community is now being taken forward into cornucopias as well. So I'm curious about the bit. What is it about? Can you tell us more? Also just on a side note, love to know where the name came from. I am an incurable mythology geek, so I love the Greek mythology vibes it gives off. I also think the sense of abundance it evokes seems very apt. You guys are building. We'd love to hear more about exactly what it is and just kind of what the vision is that the two of you share.
Josh:Well, I'll let Rob share more about the origin of the name. I'll just say this, that I was a full supporter of the name mostly because of exactly what you already said, which is that it evokes a buzz. And I think that's really so much of what the ethos of crypto is .Overall, It's like this opportunity, and you mentioned that before, for people to change their life circumstance, and that's a big part of what the game ultimately is and ultimately not is. To get more descriptive about what we're building, it's a metaverse based game. There's a variety of themed lands that you can travel to and from in NFT owned vehicles and there will be travel that exists for those that don't own NFTs. It's free for anyone to play. Everyone gets their own personal piece of land at the beginning of the game that comes with two trees and a hammock.
Josh:Basically they're allowed to as they go and play throughout theme zones, they get a chance to accumulate resource in the play to earn aspect of the game and build up their personal bubble, which is their personal land. They can create and build their own house exactly the way they want to build it and eventually have pets and do fun things on their land, which is pretty cool. Traveling throughout themed lands is where they would complete certain daily tasks and engage with others and have fun. That's about what the world is about. There's eventually going to be a city area where there's going to be different crypto based projects or different B to B aspects to this metaverse where say, for example, Tesla wanted to have a showroom in our city and that could be built out and we could give somebody a virtual tour of a Tesla.
Josh:Many of these things are on the vision and on the roadmap. Yeah, this is a very exciting project and really we're hoping to eventually, as we gradually decentralize, empower more people to create their own life within this space and add economy and benefit to their life in a realistic way. A lot of what we think about is how do we bridge the physical to the digital and how do we really impact lives through what we're doing as well. It's going to take a long time, we have a big vision, but we've hit the ground running really well. I don't know what Rob might add to that. Definitely the origin of the name would be good, but yeah, go ahead Rob.
Rob:Yeah, I can go for the name. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the name Cornucopias comes with two parts. It really has cornucopia and the tagline the islander waits. That came pretty quickly because Charles Hoskinson of Cardano, once did one of his famous whiteboard speeches where he talked about the island, the ocean and the pond. The pond was this metaphor for Ethereum where all these Ethereum, solidity developers are all experimenting. It's not the finished thing, but they're all playing around with their little petri dish. What Charles wanted to do was attract all these other developers that were what he called in the ocean. So the oceans were developers like myself, the Net, the C Sharp, the Visual Basic, the java, the JavaScript, hundreds and hundreds of different programming languages. The idea was they were going to all end up on the island. The island was this perfect blend of all these developers programming in Haskell and us on the cardano network, so the island awaits.
Rob:That came quite natural looking for the name Cornucopia. That was quite tricky because I knew what we wanted to do was create a name that represented a free community, blockchain community for everyone to be part of. We looked at the words like planet and world and nothing really captured the vision that I was looking for. Almost within an hour I watched two programs and both of them said the word Cornucopia and I thought, wow, that's the thing that encompasses what I want. I did a quick check up on the dictionary to make sure it was what I thought it meant. With the horn of plenty and plenty for everyone, it just captured the true essence of what we needed. Obviously you need to find the domain name. We couldn't find the domain name, you put an S on the end of it and we ended up with Cornucopias.
Not as romantic at the end, but that's how the whole name came together.
Nadja:I have to say that in 2022, the deciding factor in most business names is no longer the creativity or the meaning behind it, but really it's just is the domain name available. Interesting to see how this is going to change when we get the NFT domains and then again a new world opens up. I love the synchronicity of the name and just kind of showing that okay, this is like a nudge that you're in the right direction, heading in the right direction. First of all, I love this idea of really modeling the entire game around your principles and your values that you would like to empower people and offer these life changing opportunities. I think as a company that we've also really built our entire model on, this idea of crypto should be empowering and should be available to all. Whether it's someone at a high income level or a lower income level, the glass ceiling shouldn't be there in the way that we've kind of brought it in from these legacy systems.
Nadja:Love how you are weaving your own values into the entire company as a whole and I think it shows. I'm not a gamer, but I have to say that this idea of two trees and a hammock sounded really appealing. I'm not sure if I would kind of build anything that sounds like a lot of work. Although on the other hand, my son is a huge Minecraft fan and I've often wondered, especially since Minecraft has expressed that they are not really keen on getting in on this universe that we are in, what the next generation of those kind of sandbox games are going to bring? It sounds like, from what I heard, that this opportunity that you're offering players to really go into the sandbox environment and make it their own while at the same time offering, of course, these opportunities to play, to earn is very much what you've built into the product.
Nadja:From that note onto a bit of more NFT focused question is your approach to NFTs and how do you consider it to be unique? Also maybe as an add on, the same question related to the metaverse as well.
Josh:Sure. Our approach to NFTs is it's unique primarily just because and I wouldn't say that's unique and different than a lot of the gaming NFT companies out there. But what anybody should know about NFTs in regards to gaming that's listening is that the unique approach here is that you get to own your own assets. That seems to be a given for us that are in the industry, in gaming at this point for so long. But a lot of people that haven't been in gaming NFT space may not be aware of. Now what it's allowed is for players to participate in a new way. For example, if you're out there playing Fortnite or some traditional game right now, you can put a lot of money into that. When you're done with the game, there's really nothing you have to walk away with. That's not to say that we want anybody to be done with our game
.
Josh:Hopefully they want to continue playing forever. The reality is that with NFTs power in a game, you can transfer assets, you can buy an asset from somebody else, and sell your own assets. When you're done with the game, you can sell your assets and possibly even profit significantly. It allows for players to participate in this economy in a completely new way. That's just a starter, the founding idea of NFTs within gaming. The other unique approach that we have is we're aware of a lot of the problems that exist with NFTs and gaming and it's forcing us to innovate in a variety of ways. We have to look at how we can do dynamic NFTs that change as a player accomplishes things throughout the game. We have to look at solutions like being able to bring in NFTs from other chains. There's a variety of problems that we have to solve and it's a lot of fun.
Josh:There's fun things like, okay, well, we have NFT pets that are on our roadmap and we want to have breeding, or it could be just breeding with horses or things like that. We get to work on basically genetic type formulas where something changes as you mix these two NFTs and it creates something new. There's a lot of fun stuff that we get to explore that become solutions for our game eventually that make it more engaging, more entertaining, and more economical for people to participate in.
Rob:Yeah, and I think when we started this, we took 13 months before we sold our first NFTs. That time was taken studying what was going on with other projects across all chains. One of the I think big standouts at the time was probably the central and Axie infinity of how they've shown that if you really capture the imagination people will follow. But what I found with Axie infinity is people weren't enjoying the game, they were just playing it for the sake of earning money. When you looked at the central land people were buying the plots because it was new but then they were basically a ghost chain. What we wanted to do is we wanted to create this from a gaming point of view where the whole Metaverse was a fun place to be, it had loops in it and it was driven from a gaming point of view that the metaverse comes into that because there's real economies in there.
Rob:Players are owning the land and the farming the land and they're trading between districts and they're really go along. The main hook is people being part of a community and working together and the blockchain really for me should be this kind of hidden layer. If we want to attract the massive gamers they need to come in and the game and the story has to be number one. They need a reason to keep coming back and then we'll slowly introduce the metaverse and NFTs and blockchain to them when they're ready. The game is entirely free to play and that is always really important. You don't have to have NFTs to play the game but if you do have NFTs then there's going to be different types of benefits. We've always aimed to have everything from the free players to come all the way through to have that daily loop all the way up to the players that actually want to participate and own the NFTs.
Nadja:Yeah, it really highlights the point. I think that is very key to this whole idea of mass adoption. Mass adoption is going to be about utility, not the technology. I think what a lot of companies have done is they've and I mean this is completely natural because this is a very new space and.
Those Opportunities that we spoke about, it's very easy to kind of look a gift horse in the mouth if the low hanging fruit is available right here, right now. There's been so many companies that kind of jump onto the technology without really having that follow through of if there's no real world utility it's not going to be a sustainable project. I think especially what you guys said about taking 13 months before having your first NFT sale, I think that is quite unique because it's so easy for a project to start up, and within a few days or a few weeks, NFTs are out there and really is more about jumping on that bandwagon of, okay, everyone else is doing it, so let us do it as well.
Nadja:I think what really stood out for me is you mentioned earlier, Josh, about bridging this physical and digital world while at the same time impacting lives, certainly sounds from your approach both to the space as a whole as well as Cornucopias, as a specific company that you are building, that you are really working towards making this a reality, this idea that the metaverse has a real economy and that we are not only there because it's the newest latest thing or if you look at these Dystopian movies like Ready Player One, it's because Earth is a place that sucks and therefore we all escape there to have a better time in a digital world that's not really real. So I think your approach that you take of not only building out something that is going to have a good impact on players but also as you said, identifying the problems in NFTs and in the Metaverse and working up solutions to those problems because really these solutions are what drives innovation for example dynamic NFTs or Interoperability.
Nadja:Really just illustrates this is how this industry fleshes itself out is by companies such as yours building products such as these. We've already touched on quite a lot of this question but GameFi, I mean it's a huge thing, NFTs are huge, metaverse is going to be a big deal so we are seeing more and more emerge of these three different worlds so to speak. So I'm wondering how in your opinion are NFTs now and in future the Metaverse going to change the gaming industry? I mean the gaming industry in general is a huge space to be in with massive amounts of money and as we've touched on earlier mission is not going to come from the technologies that we are building in Web3. How do you see this changing so that these kind of technologies that we are working in is going to have a more definitive influence on the industry as a whole rather than be this niche space where we know that there's this integration but most of the work of the gaming world does not?
Josh:Yeah, I definitely want to comment on that question. It's a really important question. I will say one thing to your comment on bridging the physical with the digital in response to what I was saying earlier, I think it's important to mention some specific examples that we have just to solidify that point. One thing that we recently did with our NFT minting tech which has been claimed by many that participated as some of the best NFT minting tech experiences they've had on cardano even beating out other chains in a variety of ways. So we're really proud of the tech that we put together and the UI/UX design but in testing that, just for testing our platform, we engaged our community and we sold tees that would plant a physical tree. So the proceeds from the NFT sale would be used to plant physical trees in the world, but the actual NFT you have is something that you get to plant in your land, in the metaverse, in basically our world Cornucopias.
Josh:
In your own personal bubble, you could plant your tree or potentially even in your theme zone lands, if you have some of that. That's a very concrete example of one of the ways that we're bridging the physical with the digital. Another one would be the water wells that we mentioned earlier in the grow your steak pool proceeds from that are going to plant to build and dig water wells in Africa for people that don't have water. These are pretty real examples of how that can work. We do have that in the mindset overall. Also, obviously, the play to earn aspect is something that somebody gets to participate and possibly earn some real resource that they can utilize in their life in a variety of ways. So let's not forget that either. To your point and to your question, that is a very important one is how is mass adoption going to occur and how are NFTs going to change that in gaming?
Josh:That's one of the biggest problems, right, with crypto. If I think about introducing my friends to crypto or family members to crypto, it's a bit of a challenge. It's not like, hey, just go to this URL and sign up for this account and you're good to go. It's more like, okay, if it's a friend, I have to walk them through setting up a seed phrase and how to keep that secure. You don't really want to just pass along information, have your friend sign up, get railroaded, or lose their seed phrase and then they're out of crypto. And I think that fundamentally right there. That is the main issue with even gaming getting mass adoption of crypto because so many people are scared. They don't know what's involved and how to participate and how to be their own bank and how to keep it Secure until we can come up with solutions that are digital identity solutions that better enable the holding of wallets in a more secure way.
Josh:I think that's the barrier, right? So, yes, crypto is reaching that point of mass adoption. Obviously, we see it everywhere now, which is fantastic, but there's still a lot of barrier to entry for that minute, just doesn't know how to get involved and how to participate. We need to make that a lot easier and more seamless. In cornucopia of how do we do that just on the Fiat side, for example, if somebody down the line wanted to, for us to really get our game into the mainstream, there has to be a way for somebody that doesn't know crypto to jump in and utilize Fiat to participate in the game and. Buy in game assets or whatever. Not that it's required, it's a free to play game, but there has to be an easier onboarding process.
We're thinking about that and how we might do that, but it's not completely solved just yet. I think making it easier for the person that doesn't know what's involved is essential. Rob.
Rob:Yeah, I think that's really important. One of the ways we're tackling this is our desktop game comes with what we're calling a desktop launcher. As soon as you launch the game, it goes into this menu. It has a wallet card and a wallet built directly in there. You'll be able to use your existing wallet or the game itself will create a wallet without the player even knowing. Then, like I say, you'll be able to play the game and things will be stored in your wallet. When you are ready to learn what that wallet actually means, that's when we'll be able to take through the steps of how to take your NFTs and go on and then trade them or play with them within the game. This is one of the early ways that we're looking at and we believe that it's a good step forward to have the mass adoption.
Nadja:It reminds me of the series of book an Idiots Guide to or Dummy Guide To. At first glance, it's like, okay, well, this sounds like a really offensive term, but then whenever you are trying to understand anything new, you much prefer having something explained to you in a way that you don't have to use too much mental energy to be able to grasp anything about it. I think this idea of almost idiot proofing things to the point that as we said earlier, the technology doesn't overpower what we are trying to build on top of it is a really important thing. Also this idea that in order for us to get from where we are, which is a really small niche in the big picture, that more handholding is required for the minute. It also makes me think in Crypto we have this idea that the cutting edge projects who are out there, the pioneers, kind of discovering new lands, it's all about them.
Nadja:It really also highlights the importance of auxiliary services, all of these underlying B to B companies that are working so hard to really facilitate the ease with which users are going to be using things in this ecosystem in general in the future. I think this is really where this idea of the collaborative nature of Web3, what that is all about, because partnerships in this space is so important. You build something, I build something, we come together and the solution is four times stronger for the fact that we are collaborating. So, speaking of collaboration, so we always hear in the Web3 space about community and community as King and I mean, everyone loves to throw this buzzword around, but from what I can observe, you guys as a company really seem to take this approach of being very affable, very personal in terms of your community building.
Nadja:I mean, there are a lot of projects, good projects working on Metaverse and GameFi, but for some reason they fail to attract this really loyal user base and you guys seem to really be on top of this. What is your secret source to building a strong Web3 community? Where do you think that many projects are going wrong?
Josh:Okay, so this one's a fun one. It's dear to my heart. I've said it earlier, but like the east ethos of crypto, another part of crypto that's so powerful and why it's so impactful is the community. This community of people is allowed to participate in the economy in a way that really empowers them and it makes it so much more impactful for every person that's involved because they might have ownership of NFTs, ownership of the token that makes them want to participate. The ability to participate in voting and in the direction of the project makes it so much more meaningful. Right? That's an incredibly powerful element of crypto that becomes we're all in this together to create something bigger and better and to make the world better, so to speak, in so many ways, right? I think that's an important element of crypto that often gets forgotten by many.
Josh:Right? You look at how powerful community is in crypto, it becomes imperative that as a project, you build and cultivate a community that's positive and fun for people to participate in. I really appreciate your words and your observation about our community and what we've done because it's been very intentional. We have thought about this and kept it paramount since the very beginning. We didn't do a bunch of mass marketing that flooded our community with people that have no clue what our project is and there's a bunch of fraudsters running around it. We didn't do it that way. We grew our community organically, completely organically, through sharing content of what we're building in the game. Also through the launch of Copi Cafe. Rob and I believed that we would do that, which was incredibly hard to do at the time that we launched it because we had so much going on.
Josh:But we decided to take the plunge and launch Copi Cafe. That's where Rob and I just host a show talking about what we're doing. We're now coming up on episode 17 or 18 and it's just what we do weekly to share and be transparent with the community on where we're at, what we're building. What are the new features? Are there any leaks, anything fun for the community to learn about that we're doing this week? That's the kind of thing that we're doing just to cultivate a relationship with our community and be in front of and be with them in a way that lets them know that we care. I guess that's a lot of words to explain that we really care about our community and we want it to be. We don't care if there's not 250,000 fake bot accounts or just that we don't care about the number as much in our community.
Josh:Obviously, that's an important metric for are we growing? Right? But it's more about experience. What do you experience when you come into our community? Do you have a positive experience? What's the culture that we're creating in our community? Because we believe that to be an invaluable asset to us and we're all building this together and gradually over time, we're decentralizing and empowering the community more and more. So it's huge for us. We're also looking at ways to be innovative with the gamification of education around the Cornucopias project within our Discord. There's going to be some fun elements that we create, that we bring and we're working on this. We have a full summary paper and a lot of ideas that Matt and I are kind of teaming up with to gamify education on Cornucopia and create some fun educational badges and all sorts of good stuff within our Discord community so that eventually we have this self-moderating community which is also incredibly powerful.
Josh:The final element sorry, this is a long one and answer. It's just a topic that I'm incredibly passionate about. The final element that I would say to all of that you had said, what is it that so many of the projects are missing in regards to building community? I think it's transparency and being doxed. I'm not saying that I think everybody needs to be doxed. That's a scary thing for some. This is risky, getting you putting yourself out there in the way that we do, but I think transparency and having an intentional and caring attitude towards what you're doing with community, we love our community and it's a lot of fun. Rob, I hope I didn't say everything there. You know, I love that topic. Is there anything you wanted to add?
Rob:Well, you did make a few of my points, but that's all right. We think on the same line. I mean, yeah, I was definitely going touch being transparency and docs, but I think the other thing that we actually do is we deliver as well. As we're going along, we are using Agile. We've created this seven year roadmap and the roadmap does change. This is software that we're building. We can't always be 100% accurate when we're trying to imagine what our team is going to be like in the future, but we are delivering along the way. We went to Austin, Texas and we had some demonstrations. We were there in front of IOHK Dana Foundation where were there in person meeting and greeting. We were doing demos. Joshua Miller of IOHK, he played our game. Tamara Hassan, she played our game. We went over to Vegas in a few weeks’ time where we've got even more demos for people to play.
Rob:We've just released the pre alpha version of our mobile game that we've been working on for six months. It's open to some of our community members to test, but we're going to open that up more and that will be a play to a mobile game that's set within our metaverse. Like Josh was saying, I think it's transparency and it's been able to deliver because I think people in the crypto space, they're so skeptical on the amount of rugby that you find. There's a lot of shady characters that have been there in the past. It's companies like us to show that actually there is genuine people that are trying to make a difference in this space.
Nadja:I mentioned earlier, I'm not a gamer but I'm very willing to make an exception to put me on some kind of whitelist. I would love to explore your game and the reason for this is because when I was watching Copi Cafe, the really the ones it out for me was the authenticity with which you guys show up. It really made me want to sit down with you and I mean, I got my wish so that's great. I also wanted to get an office tour because it looks like really fun man caves that you guys have got going on. I love this conversation around community and the idea of doing it in an intentional manner again, that really aligns with what you are trying to build as founders, as a company, as opposed to jumping on the Hype train. Okay, I have X amount of numbers, and therefore I have it made, which is, unfortunately, the formula that a lot of companies use.
Nadja:What you mentioned about culture building being foundational to community growth, I think a lot of startups and a lot of founders, in fact, not even a lot. Some founders and some startups do a focus on culture building internally with their own team. It's an open question how many people extend that to community. This I think is really the difference that we are seeing in your community versus others. What you said about organic growth, I mean this goes counter to what most crypto projects do and believe and I just love how you've stayed true to what you want to do with this game and how you want Cornucopias as a company to show up in the world of crypto. I mean it shows because you do have a really engaged and a large numbered community. On that note, last question before we open it up to the audience.
Nadja:If we look into our crystal balls . Keeping in mind that no one has a crystal ball and no one knows really what's going to happen with anything, what do you think are the future of NFT? Especially if we consider GameFi, the metaverse, being able to amplify NFTs in terms of value add, what are we looked a few years into the future compared to what it is now?
Josh:Oh, yeah, okay, great question. I think it's going to be very different and I think a lot of it will still be the same. I think that the stereotype of NFTs is that somebody it's a bunch of 10,000 different variables of one JPEG art theme, right? That seems to be the current NFT use case. I don't know if that changes. Actually it will change, but I don't know how that's going to evolve. I don't think that's going to be as pervasive in the future as it is now. I could be completely wrong, because there is a valid use case for artists in a completely new way for an artist to approach artwork, right? In that way, I could see it growing significantly and in some ways, I think that are really hot often die out. The way that artists use it is, I think, going to change, but that's going to grow.
Josh:
The fact that artists can monetize their art in a completely new way is a powerful thing and very important. When you look at the use cases for NFTs, there's music, there's royalty rights, which that alone require. How can we add in some IP protection and legal to NFTs? What is that going to look like and how is that going to be done? Then there's fractionalized interest in real estate. I mean, that's a huge use case and take a property and divide it up into 10,000 units potentially. Well, now, obviously, securities law is somewhat in the way of that, but there's so many use cases that make traditional physical assets so much more liquid by utilizing the power of NFT technology. There's a lot there's so much more that we can do with it. I think it's just the beginning and it's just going to become more and more powerful as more infrastructure, more region becomes clear.
Josh:There's a lot of lack of clarity, which prevents institutional investors from getting involved in the way that they want to. Now, obviously, we have a lot more institutional adoption in crypto as a whole, but when it comes to NFTs, there needs to be more regularity clarity, more regulation clarity as the regulation increases. The power and what we can do with it, I don't really know where right now. I mean, there's so much you can do with NFTs. It's just really a matter of making it easy for people and making it work for people in a way that changes their life in some way. To improve it, that's what I would say on the topic.
Rob:Yeah. I think also on top of that, I mean, the utility is really down to the developers what they build. On top of NFTs basic level, you've just got a JPEG, but all the way up. I can imagine more interactive spaces now where NFTs are tickets and tickets into virtual shows where you can actually be your avatar, so you can be there physically at the show, but if you're not capable of making the show, maybe it's at the other side of the world. You can still participate in that show in a different way and that brings a whole new revenue stream to the artists and the people that are doing those shows. I also see supply chain being transformed as well, being able to know where your foods come and following back everything back to the route. I think it's going to be really important moving forward.
Rob:Like Josh says, there is going to be hundreds of thousands of different utility to come from NFT. Some are being looked into now, some have not even been thought about yet.
Nadja:That's really the most exciting thing about all of this. Everything in web3. I mean, if you think about PFPs and how much it's captured people's imaginations for the time that it did, but it's really like going to a new land and being this pioneer. I don't know, first you put up a tent and then you come back with more building materials to be sustainable and ecofriendly. You should source it from the place where you are. We really are all building on top of each new innovation that this technology takes. This is really why the space is so exciting. We've come to the end of our hour. In the interest of time. I'm not going to take too many questions, but Rob and Josh, it has been absolutely amazing getting your very insightful insights on the impact that gameFi and Metaverse is going to have on NFTs and vice versa.
Nadja:Definitely also on the vision with which you are building Cornucopias, and also really how value driven and intentional it is. I'm sure that the audience is itching to pick your brain. So I'm going to open the floor. If you have a question for the Cornucopias team, please put in a speaker request. Or alternatively, you can also message your question directly to the AdLunam Twitter handle. I'll give it just a few seconds or so. All right, so I see we've got a speaker, so I'm not going to try and answer your Twitter handle. The person who is the speaker, please go ahead.
Speaker:Hi. Thanks for letting me join in. What's up, Rob? What's up, Josh? You guys can interrupt me and talk to. It’s Rob, I played the game that Rob mentioned that other people were playing at Consensus. Yeah, I played that. That was really cool and unique how us as a community just come through for each other over there. It was really great to hear that you've noticed that there is a strong community there because it really is and it's a really lovely one in many different ways. I actually already expressed gratitude for Team Cornucopias actually bringing me into that experience the way that they did. I just want to thank them again because really nice accentuation out of all my time out of there. It was great. I can't wait until next year and in October in the future. That's what's going on. I'm not sure if you guys heard the announcement yet, but it's official.
I haven't done an official announcement yet, so you guys will see. I hope that all is well and it's a great space.
Josh:What was the announcement? Sorry.
Speaker:It'll come through the grapevine, bro. I became a partner somewhere.
Josh:Okay. Alright, well, we'll be excited to hear that when it comes through. Yeah, it was definitely great to meet you at Consensus. I'm glad you got to play the game. Obviously, that was very early stages, but pretty fun, right?
Speaker:Yeah, it was awesome. I remember my time. It was 2:12.
Rob:Yeah, I remember it well. Congratulations on being the mystery partner. I'm sure we'll find out pretty soon what that means.
Speaker:Thanks. Yeah, I'll share it for you.
Nadja:Guys, I would love to take more questions. I see we have really interesting questions coming in about Play to Earn and the sustainability of Play to Earn as a model, but unfortunately we have run out of time. I think that our speaker really just highlighted just how impactful your community is. So let's end on that high note. That is it from us today. If you would like to follow the Cornucopias team, you can catch them on the Twitter handle at cornucopias game. There's also a linktree to all of their important land. Definitely go check out. I mean, if you've listened to this episode, I think there's very few people here who don't want to go look at what you guys are building. This was absolutely great connecting with you, and I'm sure that we'll all be watching closely as you continue to build out what sounds like a really great game, a really great universe, and a really great community as well.
Nadja:To the listeners, big shout out for joining us today. I'm sure that you've gained as of I, many new insights on the topic. Thanks to these very talented brains behind Cornucopias. Catch you again next week for another episode of The Future of NFTs, brought to you by AdLunam. Cheers, guys.
Rob:Yes, thanks for having us.