Blockchain must move beyond buzzwords & towards sustainable player asset value

[Music] we are joined once again by alan from freeverse good tavisa nice to be back as well now we talked in london when you attended pgc uh london 2022 but things have changed in the last few months specifically was it really this week that you had your family we actually announced it yesterday wow yeah that's our series a funding round yeah so 10 million euros uh 10 and a half million dollars or whatever it is co-led by um uh early bird venture capital and target global and uh with uh following on investments from our existing investors at our adventures and four founders capital and uh yeah and some some great other investors we've got onefootball.com in there as well and uh german international footballer mario gotze uh has uh also invested as an angel and we have uh travel perk ceo abby mayer uh serial fintech entrepreneur max almond so loads of great people we're really happy to announce the rounds they must be kind of validating given that i mean as controversial as the nft market can

be your take on it the idea of a living nft is is a different wrinkle again and i think some people have their difficulties getting their heads around just a plain old nft let alone a living one so for people to kind of put this much stock in what you're doing must be quite yeah well i guess what we want to do with this investment round really more than anything is is follow up on our mission of bringing real value to the concept of web 3 digital ownership right and so nfts have been this you know buzzword that's exploded in the last 18 months um and and they represent the you know the cutting edge if you like of the concept of digital ownership within the metaverse but then that's related to things like fungible tokens and cryptocurrency as well and and and and what the wider concept of decentralized identity you know within in gaming in the metaphors and that's something that we're really interested in three verse and we do think the concept of having this evolutionary asset the asset that changes according to how you use it um

provides a fairer and more sustainable value to that asset right and it's not just based on the speculation as i mentioned the last time we spoke in london and so um you know we're very excited to have that that validation from really renowned investors and uh and we're very excited to be funding our go to market team more than anything to really bring that message out and come to some amazing companies like this one gotcha we're diving a little bit deeper than we did before you've talked about the type of agreement that needs to be reached between creators and users when it comes to the process of evolving an nft what does that mean explain that a little for me yeah so if you think about how what the concept of an of an evolutionary or a dynamic nft means it means that it can change so how can it change you can't just have the user saying i'm going to paint my red car pink right because you know then anyone could do anything with their assets and there would be no control over what what what are those assets what are those properties actually mean and so the way we organize it in freebus

is that the original asset creator has to provide the stamp of authority the central approval over any changes that occur to the asset so if the if the game mechanics state that the user is permitted to change the color of their car for example right um then uh the game the original asset creator the game developer would have to provide that stamp of approval on the living asset to approve the fact that that change can take place and so that does mean that there has to be this kind of agreement between the gamer and the game developer you know the game developer has to say uh be transparent about what the rules are by which the asset can evolve and change and uh the gamer says okay fine i accept those and and uh and i'm happy to do so because it means that the value of my asset is is based on how i use it rather than just how rare it is so i guess it it then falls upon the creator i guess to be quite transparent in exactly what they will and won't allow so i can envisage scenarios where

people have purchased something and they want to make a crazy evolution and then they're frustrated by the fact that it won't do the thing that they think it should do how is it just a simple simply a case of very good small prints like how does one communicate if we're going to make that kind of agreement well small print is definitely involved in everything unfortunately right but i think more than that gamers are already used to the idea of of the rules of the game right you know when we play a game we understand how it works right you understand that you know and especially now in with free to play games becoming um increasingly common you know they're now almost a dominant model in uh certainly in the mobile games industry they are those rules well understood you know you have your soft currency or your tokens and you spend them in a certain way you get upgraded for a certain your certain character or your assets in the game anyway so gamers understand that uh every game has rules right already and so now i just met of extending those rules to the concept of the nft which is now this permanent asset that can be traded right so i don't think you're actually introducing anything new and complicated for gamers

because they're already accustomed to the idea of following the game mechanics and abiding by the rules of the game anyway i think one of the more interesting evolutions that we've seen within the market itself is people wanting to tie the value that they put into a game to some form of financial reward or at least finances in some way previously it was a case if you bought the game there was that investment up front but that was investment was for entertainment that's what you were getting out of it but now we've had people even you know ex nintendo president reggie kind of very bullish on blockchain and the idea that hey pay to earn is a good thing to do that if i put all this time into my game if i wanted to after a year sell my animal crossing village to somebody then hey i should be allowed to do that and that would be a nice thing to gain some value back in some ways you guys are working with something that is a digital asset it is something where you can technically you know get some value back from it but behave somewhat differently to the play-to-earn model what do you feel about this kind of bringing money into

this space in a way that actually affects potentially gameplay yeah i think one of the messages that that's coming through in my conversations uh here at poker gamer connects in seattle is the fact that games first and foremost have to be fun right and there is the element of playing earned games that if you're introducing money uh money can and cannot be fun as well it can be stressful sometimes right and so i think the the playing and model definitely has its place um i think it's definitely had a few successes in certain places um i do think it's a valid model um i don't think it's going to be the the beyond end-all of the gaming industry and i think uh finding that balance between those gamers who want to be more involved in the playing inside without that model that's fine and those gamers who don't want to be involved at all that's fine too and then there's the middle way which refresh which perhaps freebus enables which is you know if you want to be able to trade your assets you know

you can but you still don't have to to enjoy the game and that's something that's quite important for us i'm also interested in the there seems to be a i guess a cognitive dissonance between the way that the public at large perceives nfts and people within the space i mean like over the last couple of months we've seen what last week's actually the idea that the nft market is completely tanked the bottle has fallen out of it and that's all the stuff that's being shared online and means and yet you've just acquired 10 million in funding so those two things seem to run counter to each other do you think there is still a a perception issue for the whole nft thing and how do you address it to make people understand what you see as the benefits of it yeah i think um the ideas the entities did get a bad reputation to a certain extent um because they're associated with speculation right and um it didn't take much imagination to look at what was happening in the nft space um maybe six to nine months ago and realized that you know this was perhaps

accelerating a little bit too hot you know going a bit too hot accelerating too fast um and i think the reason that um the really the reason that we're doing this as freebus is that we do believe in the concept of digital ownership um whether it's in the metaverse whatever that is or whether it's in video games or whether it's just generally owning things the cat is out of the bag to a certain extent i think with the nfts um maybe the nft speculative boom has passed i don't think that's a bad thing because i think it means that uh a more fair and more sustainable model of digital ownership in the wider web three metaverse decentralized world um is something that we at three of us can work towards and that's something that we're really um really keen on pushing with uh with our existing partners and our new partners that we're bringing on board now so you said that you're going to be using a good chunk of that that money to get a push to market what can we expect from you folks in the next like six to twelve months how how what should we look out

for well the exciting things is several releases several press releases and several uh bits of news will be announcing regarding the the sign deals that we have um we'll also be doing quite a big push into various different events such as this one and other ones that are similar to try and bring our brand out and bring that message really of a more sustainable and fairer way of digital ownership so yeah we'll be uh we're making a lot of noise over the next year definitely [Music]