Our Most Anticipated Web3 Games

foreign [Music] gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a full sun current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novik's growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and advisory services for more information visit www.navic.com now let's jump into the episode hi everyone I'm your host Aaron Bush and today's episode is going to be a lot of fun I'm joined by my friend Pierce kicks Pierce is a founding partner at Delphi Adventures Adventure partner for bitcraft and is a board member of the blockchain game Alliance you may have heard peers on this podcast before or on his own metaverse musings show and he

also has collaborated on awesome content with novik in the past including his Epic into the void where crypto meets the vetiverse piece from 2020 um and also including our more recent joint report titled the great reset your 2023 guide to web 3 games I'll include both of those links in the show notes but Piers welcome back to the pod it's great to be back it's always a pleasure uh chatting with you and also the broader novik team um yeah super excited you know for the few pieces that we've been able to sort of do together now and uh you get to keep the conversation rolling even through uh the bear market so uh let's get after it yes always lots of fun no matter what's going on in the market so there's also a lot we're gonna dig into today um we're gonna talk about our most anticipated web 3 games what modern Founders are doing differently to stand out and I have a fun game we'll play later on in the episode but to start

Pierce I actually want to to begin with a topic that we both have in common uh which is that despite our different backgrounds and geographies and focuses we've both dropped out of school to become professional investors and then we segued that career into an intersection with gaming me with novik and use a VC with Delphi and big craft and there's a couple Reflections I want to get to here but to start would you mind quickly sharing how your professional Journey started and where it's gone so far yeah absolutely um I mean I'm sort of lucky enough to have kind of stumbled across crypto you know pretty young um mainly through the lens of video games which is kind of where things started out for me with a RuneScape and gold farming back in the days so um I always felt very fortunate that I had like an eye on that um and it was something that I was very excited about um I just finished school and was kind of uh you know debating you know cracking on with my life or

going and sort of exploring I remember uh going for dinner with my parents and asking if they'd give me their blessing to go and live down on a beach in Costa Rica and do some surfing but thankfully um opted to go and sort of study um studying computer science and philosophy but I only made it um about three months uh I was you know very sort of uh eager to get going let's say back then I think obviously sort of 2017 time this was um with sort of crypto going the way it was it was a pretty exciting time with you know all sorts of um absurd price actions I'm sure folks around them would have remembered sort of altcoin chasing and whatnot back in the day uh many sleepless nights um and yeah I mean I've been spending a lot of time sort of uh researching that space and um a good friend of mine who uh you know we've been discussing a lot of the stuff that we've been up to had basically met um to sort of investors out in uh Seville in Spain and um suggested that I sort of fly out and meet with them because they were super interested in kind of learning more about the space and um I did so um we ended up you know having a long

sort of dinner it ended up being about I don't know 4 am on a Wednesday night in Seville and we were still chatting about all of this stuff and um yeah they kind of said to me would I be willing when I finished my studies to go and um you know set something up with them um we'd been sort of yeah diving deep and all the things that have been exciting me about the space how it could unfold and uh you know um my I think I remember speaking to my dad back then I don't know whether he told me this before but it's it's one of his uh lines that has always stuck with me um he said when I broached the idea of uh you know cracking on with what was exciting me and then what I felt like I really wanted to do ultimately anyway um he said that you can't catch the wave if you're not in the water um which I really liked uh you know some surfing allergy there and I don't know I'd always had a desire to jump in at the deep end um you know you and I were discussing just now sort of uh you know how lucky I've felt how lucky we felt to always know what it is that we're excited about and for me you know that was crypto that was you know like uh it was obviously less clear then but kind of the fusion um with games games and crypto were really the two levels and so

made a ton of sense for me to do so um so kind of kicked off there jumped in at the deep end spent a lot of time um you know exploring different jurisdictions for setting the fund up sort of managing these early funds on behalf of these two uh investors and um yeah kind of uh grew into it over time you know not really having any idea when I jumped in and meeting lots of fantastic people and Role Models along the way um learning lots of Hard lessons um having lots of you know major excitements in that period too um and yeah eventually that led me to sort of meeting uh Jose one of the Delphi Partners out in Paris who I'm lucky enough to call you know a best friend these days we've had all sorts of adventures together um and then yeah I guess sort of like six or seven months after that I think is when we met the uh 5 original Delphi Founders who had all dropped out of Wall Street and were trying to bring this kind of institutional grade analysis to crypto um and yeah let's say there was a strong culture fit um and we sort of you know started exploring exploring you know um what working together could look like um and that's kind of yeah what led us

to where we are awesome and I know that we we have a bunch of aspiring young people college students and young professionals that listen to our show and even though your path is unique I'm curious what you learned about charting a different course so young from what is standard like what were the good and the bads of doing that or if you were to just kind of talk to other young people about charting their own paths how would you help them think through that yeah um I don't know from my perspective it's always kind of been uh like the whole university angle I just in this day and age I don't really think it's like a meaningful means of Distinction unless you're like gunning for like you know truly asked here like you know top end universities um I think it's like a path that's so well taught and that it's like extremely uninteresting I think the world is moving so quickly in so many different directions that um you know being able to leverage the internet you know both as a learning device as uh as well as

leverage right as a distribution Channel like it is easier than ever to you know find something that you love that you're excited about and lean into it you know start off just reading what other people are putting out um you know if you start building your own ideas on it your own thesis on things then you know invite others to talk with you I think putting together even blog posts Twitter threads um you know a podcast if you like like building that proof of work if you like of um building a portfolio of thoughts of yours that you're sharing online that you can point to if you know um an opportunity or to present itself um I think that that's so important I think it's an enormously exciting time to be alive for that um and yeah there's this like you know idea of sort of digital Serendipity right like engineer greater surface area online for Randomness to happen and um yeah I kind of maximize that surface area of opportunity and uh I think that's what I'd say like I have you know so many awesome friends who are really talented and really passionate about

certain things but um no one would ever know it you know what I mean it's like use the internet to in your own like small place in your own small corner of the internet like start just making your own thoughts clearer on something by writing right I think that's a massive forcing function for clarity of thought and I mean you can't guarantee it in life as you can't guarantee anything but uh you know the odds are someone will kind of stumble across that or as I say if you want to be more active in your approach if you want to look at firms that are investing or building in the space that excites you you can you know reach out and say you know this is what I've done this is what I think about x y and z um and like that to me is like a really exciting you know initial footing um so yeah those are kind of my thoughts there yeah I think that's great advice um especially the don't necessarily make your credentials actual credentials make it your work that showcases your Merit um and you can through the internet through writing and such you can use it

as a tool to learn but also just to show to other people what you got um and in my story similarly um I kind of got my my first fortunate step forward after being pseudonymous on investing discussion boards and you know slowly evolving from asking dumb questions answering questions to posting analyzes until people you know started paying um attention and then they learn you know later who I was and and such but having that like body of of work on the internet that that people see definitely was a huge step forward I guess like a couple more Reflections from my end and I'm curious what you think and then we can we can kind of move forward to the other topics but um one is that every time I've I've deviated from what is normal people have told me that it's risky um like dropping out of school or a job is like always being risky because it's not the normal thing to do but I've learned that the way that many people think about risk is often

um wrong because for one I think there is always too much focus on what you are leaving like what you were dropping out of and not enough on what you are dropping into um and if you have something great to drop into it doesn't have to be like out of school like it could be like anything that you're doing at any point in life right um it's possible to like both minimize risk and increase opportunity compared to sticking to where you are and people often forget that the worst thing that could happen is just going back to where you started like honestly like they're like there normally isn't actually that much risk to doing something different because if it doesn't work you could just go the other path um or or reset um and the second thing that I learned is that like even so especially when you're young there are very real trade-offs to making um decisions some are good like you mentioned like University like instead of like paying for school you can get paid to do work and you know bypass a lot of like student loans and things

that a lot of people would normally have to take on which is which is great and just get a head start in terms of like the years that you can dedicate to work if that's what you're interested to but um you know on the other hand at least for me I don't know if it was for you but it was social suicide for a while uh when everyone your own age is off doing something else you know adorably these massive clusters of school and and whatnot and so it's you know it kind of had to go into monk mode a little bit and just kind of like really drill in on yourself and and learn and improve for a while and then eventually life catches up with you again um and in other ways and that definitely had some some good times and bad times but anyways yeah Reflections there no no I totally agree on a number of those I like um yeah obviously the kind of uh yeah locking in properly like one of the things I really struggled with for sure was the whole like Grass Is Always Green in Psychology right like as soon as I you know had dropped out and saw all my friends doing this that and the other I

was like Wow am I like missing out on like key sort of experiences you want me to have as part of growing up but my conclusion was absolutely not um honestly you I mean I was living in different countries like for you know many periods wouldn't see my close friends from a year or two or whatever and it's like um dare I say it nothing ever really changes like if people you grew up with like those that you love and care about like I think they're always going to be there um and then yeah I think I think um the other thing I'd say on that is like being comfortable like being alone and putting in the ground mind and like actually giving yourself the time to be alone with your thoughts and like really decide what it is you feel about the world and what excites you and really like kind of hone in on like what your thesis is on what excites you is so important I find so many you know friends I know are like terrified of being alone as in like not being alone longer term but like spending time alone and it's like actually a really important thing that I think um you know most people would generally benefit from um and then to your point about you know

uh being able to take those risks when you're younger like especially someone you know entertaining going straight into University as you say you the opportunity is likely still there a year later like when we talk about making asymmetric bets and asymmetric opportunities like that really is one I always love the Latin quote I won't try and quote it in Latin but you know fortune favors the brave fortune favors the bold and I do think yeah jumping in and um you know putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation where there's going to be like maximal learning you know what I mean is is something that's actually like thrilling like scary but thrilling and um you know I'm sure that there are many examples of where it hasn't worked out um but I mean you don't want to be the person that never tried right yeah well I could talk about this probably the full hour with you peers but we're 12 minutes in so let's get moving to to some other topics that that people probably for uh listen signed up to listen into yeah uh which is games so

um let's talk about um web3 games and I've I don't know about you pierce so I'm kind of tired about a lot of the web 3 discussion feeling so serious lately especially ever since the The Fallout started happening a couple years ago everything around regulations nitpicking tokenomics the boom and bus all of that so let's have some fun with this we both prepared our top five most most anticipated blockchain and web 3 games we don't know what the other person has picked and we'll go and reverse order starting at number five but I thought it would be fun to get a pulse on what we're each excited about and it could make for an interesting watch list for all of our listeners so peers um if you're ready let's start with you what is your number five I'd say um obviously always tricky ranking these things right I must caveat by saying that um I wouldn't say that there's necessarily a strong sort of like

ordering to them per se because uh a lot of these I'm you know generally excited about um but I'd say yeah number five uh is one which I'm sure a lot of people will be familiar with by now is um Ember sword uh which you know super exciting sort of blockchain MMORPG that's taken inspiration from a ton of the games that I love they built some really insane sort of browser engine technology that optimizes for you know Low End Hardware and I think um if you look at how demographics have skewed so far in terms of uh you know gamer profiles that are most excited about some of the unique affordances of these Technologies I think it's a very you know sensible thing to have done um and yeah the recent play tests and whatnot have been super super dope so excited to see what comes sweet I have not seen the play tests or been involved so I didn't put this one on my list but I know um it looks good from a distance so I think that's an exciting one uh to have on this list my number five is a slight cop-out it's whatever the Avalon team is building Avalon raised 13 million dollars and around led by bitcraft this

year to build out a platform with web3 and ugc capabilities and as I read it the team is looking to build essentially a triple A MMO on top of this platform and I do think that MMOs have real potential with web 3 elements and building a platform in a way where people can have different types of MMO experiences or mod-like experiences more in one spot will actually make a lot of the interoperability that makes some of these web 3 pieces more interesting actually um possible there's obviously so much we don't know about this project and with projects like this that are so ambitious You Know Anything Could Happen hints me putting it number five on my list and not not higher up but even just personally just from like a fun standpoint like this is the kind of game more of like an MMO with more like in-depth features that like lend themselves to player ownership where even like across different experiences you can kind of share um assets and stuff

um that sounds really compelling to me so I'm just excited to see what this team comes up with in the next couple years also one of the founders uh created EverQuest so they got some real um Talent uh behind this team that's familiar with what makes a good MMO so that is my number five yeah um Avalon's actually on my list as well so maybe I'll put that at my four um I I completely agree um I think you know uh obviously everyone that's building and investing in games loves games but it's like um there's a certain degree to which some people really you know cut them and they bleed games and it's like uh the entire team sort of um you know chemistry and like love for games um is is pretty fascinating and yeah I mean some of the early kind of like vertical slices that we've seen look pretty amazing so um yeah I'm enormously excited to see where Avalon goes and completely agree in terms of um you know suitability of games of this type to you know some of these sort of crypto Loops if we like

um and yeah the kind of ugc aspect of these and you know the Builder piece of these is like uh pretty pretty exciting I'm very excited to see where all that goes so that maybe I'll put that as my four um I don't know if you want to go to the next one but uh yeah okay yeah I'll go to my next one I I doubt um it is our the last one that will overlap actually I'll let you go I don't want to overlap with you again in case it happens what is what's number three on your list um number three on my list that's annoying I'm really struggling to narrow things down but I'll say um one that uh you know is still pretty early on still pretty stealth um it's called Cambria um and basically this project is uh everything I ever wanted I think in terms of you know my youngest self growing up and whatnot I spent um decades in RuneScape at this point um and basically uh it's really leaning into this whole thesis of like um you know crypto orders this sort of uh MMORPG unfolding on chain if you like and so what they're trying to do is

build um like a front end basically to this permissionless stack of protocols in crypto so um drawing on mechanics from you know stuff like old school RuneScape things that have really stood the test of time um you know something that's kind of nostalgic of that you know time that many of us sort of grew up online and whatnot um and yeah leveraging the stack that is crypto to allow people to you know do things like in the jewel Arena stake uh 1v1 sort of any combination of fungible and non-fungible tokens some really amazing like large-scale sort of concurrent um PVP Loops right so you kind of have like Guild Wars effectively where you're trying to um or Clan Wars if you like where you're trying to control these obelisks in the wilderness that are sort of you know a missing resources that you need to control troll I think it has all of these amazing ingredients like enough that I think you know it's it's super exciting and it's really gonna um strike a nerve in terms of like Nostalgia that people feel for that time and these types of games but um it's that like quirky exciting

um Nimble um sort of setup that I love because that's where this weird emergent Behavior forms in these types of communities and uh I'm super excited to see what comes from it over the over the coming years cool I actually did not know much of anything about this game so exciting to see it pop up on your list taught me something I bet many other people it's it's new for them too um my number four is uh not 100 sure how to say it aurori Ari um and um this game is Solana bass that uses collectible nft characters and essentially a a turn based tactics game and it lets players um experience the the world uh through both a single player story and competitive PVP it's also um you know it very much Embraces its blockchain web 3 roots and like kind of like embedding the terminology sort of as like jokes throughout like how the how the gameplay comes across and how like the story around it unfolds and

such um and I don't think this is going to be like the biggest like AAA kind of game ever but it seems to have like a pretty compelling team behind it that's been working on it um for for quite some time now and as I have at least from a distance started to see it um um come together um I think it it's turning out to be potentially pretty interesting we um covered the game in a previous game radar deconstruction in navic Pro and we found the game designed to be relatively straightforward and fun and the tokenomics to have showcased um pretty above average thoughtfulness to what we were running into with other projects and there's a probably a bunch of new details here that I need to get caught up on but I think at least parts of this game are shipping pretty soon and because it's straightforward and seemingly pretty well made it's one that probably people can check out sooner than later and have a pretty fun time playing so that is my number four

on my list I don't know if you have any comments on that one or I can just jump into my number three and catch up with you pierce yeah I'm honestly out the loop on the latest updates from a Rory but um I will say uh it's something that we looked at very early on and um uh you know ended up sort of not not doing deal wise but um I've been super impressed with uh you know the updates that I was abreast of caught up with the team um maybe six months ago and uh yeah was was very um pleasantly surprised by you know how cool uh that was looking so um definitely eager to see how that one evolves as well great uh my number three is shrapnel shrapnel is an extraction shooter game built on the Unreal Engine five and it seems to be um about as good of a bet of any shooter game in web 3 to stick the landing in some way at least that I have seen so far and actually kind of the shooter genre maybe doesn't lend itself as much to to web3 uh just given the kinds of economies these games tend to have and

how um you typically don't want assets getting in the way of like even competitive gameplay um but um I'm pretty bullish on extraction Shooters right now for one and what I've seen from this game the feedback on the play test has been pretty positive and the nft aspects of the game seem more cosmetic and don't really get in the way of the gameplay themselves which I think is like a nice directional step that many of these types of games need to go and this is an early mover and doing that I do have maybe some hesitance around the broader token strategy and staking and how like the value like really is or should should be captured there and how that will then intersect with how the game actually works and of course like teams like this are treading new water and trying to figure that out themselves um but the game itself looks fun so just as like a a player who wants more extraction shooter games and wants to

like see how the intersection of like Shooters and web3 can actually come together in interesting ways um I have um this one on my list according to the roadmap they say the launch is in Q4 this year but I don't actually know if that's gonna happen it could be more um next year but that was number three yeah that one might be some kind of stuff launch if we stay at this year but um I totally agree I think um you know super exciting project um team has been uh pretty pretty relentlessly heads down um it's been awesome to see it come together you know so quickly or already the early playables I was uh play testing it out at GDC which was great fun um to my utter dismay in my first place as they didn't tell me that there's a bleed out mechanic that you need to Pat yourself up otherwise you're bleeding out and so I was there hoovering up for a moment and then all of a sudden I killed over dead um but I agree super excited to see where that goes and I think also there's like um as you say uh it's like not intrusive the crypto implementation

which is like kind of hard to do I think around Shooters I agree there's like a number of ways one could go about it but uh yeah I mean excited to see where they land with it and I also think that the sort of ugc elements they're introducing I know everyone's always talking about ugc but I do think if you're um you know in the context of weapon designs or map designs or even like game modes and stuff it's like really interesting to hand those things over the community and see what comes and when you do have like strong like you know Community governance aspects and the ability for people to meaningfully vote and you know over time we start talking about royalties through these different uh Creator pieces like if they can nail the cool game mechanics if they can establish themselves as like a go-to shooter platform it's like you know um because of the warm embrace of yeah like the community building aspects um in terms of ugc and whatnot like I do think it could be really really exciting over time so yeah you could you could see where that one goes um my equivalent actually then uh I was gonna do Midnight Society and dead drop but here we go the other shooter which is in the ring

um again like I think this one um part of my excitement about it is like uh definitely well first of all I think the game is really really fun to play um I've been loving messing around with all the early Builds on that and you know the sniping feels great in particular um I like the idea of like you know sort of vertical Battle Royale um I think it's an interesting game Direction I like the map design even though I think it's almost way too big at the moment but we'll we'll see where we get to as the servers kind of fill out more um but you know predominantly I love doctor disrespect I think he's an awesome brand I think um he really understands like uh you know the future of where IP and Brands can go right Dr disrespect has built this persona that um you know really will outlive him um it's not about the guy behind it it's about the bombastic dude with the shades and his mustache and his vest right and I think that's really smart when we start thinking about you know um how things are going to evolve in the future and how you can perpetuate IP across many different digital environments like I mean we kind of touched on Leverage of

the internet earlier on I think it's a really smart way that he's built his brand um I think you know I'm bullish doctor disrespect um and excited to see where he goes and like you know steering his audience towards this stuff like for an individual Creator to like take a big stand on something like this publicly early on is like I think commendable um it's not easy to do like you have reply guys you know non-stop down his throat even now um and so yeah let's see where it goes but it's been cool to see even at GDC out at that event you know getting a bunch of um you know streamers involved and actual players like getting this thing going and like starting to introduce people to the space more so um yeah there we go two Shooters slightly different approaches but excited to see uh both of them come to fruition uh so uh it was dead drop that was the name of the the game yeah Midnight Society is the studio and dead drop is the game right cool yeah I haven't seen much about that that game yet obviously no Midnight Society but glad to hear that you're you're super bullish on them um my number two is eluvium um olivium is an interconnected Universe

of games three to start maybe more later um this includes an open world exploration game an industrial city Builder and an auto battler and I think it operates it does operate on immutable ax which of course is built on ethereum um and there's a big seemingly talented team behind this project and what they're building genuinely looks pretty high quality but what stands out a lot to me uh here is that at novik we've generally been pretty critical on specific token and economy design implementations um you know a lot of web 3 games have had some flaws and especially the more like blockchain opponents and the more token components you throw in the harder it is to get all of those pieces to work together because it ratchets up the complexity but when we looked at alluvium we thought you know what this one could actually this one could actually work um and and stick the landing and it's it's token and economy designs and

um that's saying something because this game is heavily tokenized even with land and is driven by a dow and does push some boundaries on how interoperability Works within its games so it's very novel in a lot of ways and does a lot of different things but it appears to be super thoughtful across all of it and obviously there still is a lot here that needs to be proven out making three plus games is hard and you know being live and maintaining all of that and still getting it to work together across all of that is going to be a a big task to to do well but from what we've seen so far um we like it and I'm looking forward just as a gamer to checking out the different pieces and seeing how they all intersect overlap and and and all of that when it gradually goes live and in the months ahead so that is my number two here's yeah any thoughts on that or feel free to jump into your number one 100 I think alluvium

um has just been the most amazing example I've seen of like guys that didn't come from a video game development background but just love gaming building something you know which really has momentum and I think you know it is very ambitious I think the scope um almost worries me uh but it's awesome to see it all coming together I think you know the playable stuff that's out already it's been amazing I think um you know they're really demonstrating what can be done in terms of like funding options of Leaning into crypto I think that land sale that they did last year raised 72 million dollars in like 24 hours or whatever it was 72 hours maybe um like it's uh it's been really amazing to see so yeah I'm excited to see where that goes um I think they're an awesome team that you know just uh don't stop shipping on this stuff I mean obviously It's tricky to stick to timelines Etc um like game development broadly and I think you know when you're sort of adding more ideas like as you go as well and like really sort of um Scopes expanding as well like it's been it's been tricky to sort of manage from that

perspective but it's all coming together and I totally agree very excited on that one um my next one I'd touch on which is like uh I mean can't really shed that much on um largely because I don't have full details on it because it's still a you know work in progress but um the CCP games guys announced that they're doing a you know blockchain Focus game um you know for those that don't know uh the creators of Eve online right which is like one of the longest running sort of virtual economies ever um and I just you know having been lucky enough to spend time with that team and uh and you know digest a bunch of the materials they put out over the years as well I just in terms of like the philosophy of games and really from first principles understanding you know how to calibrate these economies how to make one of these games that actually can you know persist across multiple decades that you know really was the site of um some of the most crazy and exciting like early online multiplayer

stuff I strongly encourage everyone to read empires of Eve it's a history of the great Wars of Eve online from 2003 to 2008 and there's a second part as well the thing reads like an actual science fiction book or some kind of like geopolitical strategy book it's insane yeah it's it's like the just the full spectrum of like human emotion like on display that manifested between I don't know it was it was maybe like 10 to 20 000 players across like five six years in you know the mid-naughties when you know while I was still growing up and like um knowing that these guys built that having spent time with them and understanding the insights to the gleaned from being one of the first people to chart the Uncharted so to speak um I just think they are formidably well equipped to actually properly design open economies because you know they've been able to do one that has endured for so long and um yeah I think I think they're Legends I'm planning to head out to uh Iceland in September for the 20-year

um 20-year anniversary of the servers going online which is pretty crazy so uh that would be my number two um but as I say there's not a ton of like details on it out yet but uh it's it's it's in the works it's been announced at least this is your number two yeah okay well this was my number one and I don't I don't know how you couldn't put this name put this game well I said the ranking the rankings of arbitrary as I said earlier I already made my display but uh now this was this one was definitely my number one even though I know basically nothing about it so far um just because it's from the the Eve online team and Eve online is like the would have been like the perfect playground for so much of these blockchain web 3 capabilities that we talk about um today and so yeah definitely super excited to to see what they come up with here there isn't too much to discuss about this um right now but totally Echo your thoughts that the empires of Eve book I haven't read the second one yet

um but it's really good it reads like real history which is crazy um but is it's so interesting and I kind of wish that I was older so that I could be in the middle of that back back in those like the early days especially um so I definitely whatever this next one is I kind of want to be in the next version of of the wars or so I definitely had my um appears I don't I don't know if you ever played Tribal wars that browser game back in the day no no I don't okay um it basically is it was like a a Big Grid where your like little town is like one part of this massive grid and there are all these other players that have all these other towns and you team up as tribes to basically like go at war with everyone else and take over the map basically and there was like one summer when I was in Middle School where I like I had my tribe of like a hundred people like I maxed it out and we were I was

like the general going to war no one knew I was you know like 13 years old or whatever and it was like the best time I ever had in my life and I have a feeling that's probably what a lot of the Eve online players were doing and it really is like an unmatched experience once you're into it and part of these like massive massive teams coordinating together and so being able to recreate something like that um with more modern tech and provide like true ownership and like even truer Stakes for people who are going to war that's really exciting um this game I think I mean if CCP raised money specifically for the game not for like the company as a whole so I'm curious to see what that turns into I I'm guessing it probably gets tokenized in some way as part of a broader Community I'm not sure um but but yeah that was my that was my number one super excited about it um I'm trying to think Pierce have you said your number one or have you been through all five I think so I didn't think so no

um I kind of want to touch on a bonus one afterwards as well because it's not scary game but I'm also cheating a bit here but I really would like you know for those that haven't come across this yet just to spend some time exploring it it's it's less a game it's more so a thesis an idea that multiple people are working towards um and you know it's been touched on a lot like if you're in the space but this whole notion of like fully on chain maximally on chain games and autonomous worlds right the idea that you can build um a game environment a game world where all aspects of you know it's logic um and state that's sort of stored on chain um I think this idea of yeah being able to release uh this virtual world that can outlive its creators and can actually persist across you know multiple decades obviously being fully on chain it leans like fully into the ethos of crypto the composability the forkability like all of the things that are so exciting about crypto in terms of its like open source nature with you

know Finance rails and Financial aspects baked in um really come alive when you start entertaining this thesis so I'd strongly recommend people check out um like lattice and topology like to name a couple but yeah lattice sort of ox Park like a bunch of them stuff that you know Justin gubay's been working on some of the guys that built Dark Forest to begin with like it's super exciting and don't get me wrong I think like the addressable market for these things is like still unclear because they skew towards highly technical in nature because you need to do all sorts of cryptography and coding if you want to be competitive at these early ones um and obviously there's a ton of technical execution risks right the state of art it's the state of the art of of where these systems are at is a long way away from where it needs to be but um I just it's just the most exciting Vision I think for how like Virtual Worlds game worlds can evolve is if we can get towards that ideal in the fullness of time so wanted to shout that out and then yeah I said uh another one that a bonus one it's not a game but it's um a

platform that I'm super excited about I think a lot of people feel kind of alienated when they're even trying to engage with the crypto game Space especially if you know they're not in the weeds and willing to put up with all the crap that comes with it um but yeah there's a project called hyper play um which is basically um one of the sort of uh like metamask co-founders who built you know ton of amazing stuff over there has decided that he wants to focus the next chapter on on this and um yeah it's basically trying to build that fully trusted storefront right where you have ring fencing of private keys for game sessions you can have like sort of social overlay like all the stuff you'd expect from a more integrated games ecosystem and uh yeah it incorporates sort of um the epic game store and Gog on the back end it's a really exciting project and I just feel like you know it's sitting here on my dock next to steam it's like the first time I felt like there's a really strong you know uh consumer game product that's going to do a good job of curating this uh mad space so I wanted to touch on that as well awesome well let's go ahead and wrap

this section up um but hopefully that provides a really interesting watch list for people we mentioned um in our top fives Ember sword Avalon aurori Cambria shrapnel dead drop eluvium uh whatever CCP games it's working on um lattice and then bonus uh pick for the hyper play platform so I think yeah I'm excited for all of those and to check them all out um so I think it's uh the next era of where all this is going is going to be pretty exciting um one other thing I wanted to talk to you today about peers before we we play a game and some of the closing minutes is uh Founders you obviously as an investor spend a lot of time with Founders and Founders are naturally the most critical piece of investing in early stage startups and you know many people know about standard known traits of what makes four great Founders but

also the world is changing technology is changing and the way people organize themselves is changing and your investing work is often focused on the intersection of all of that change so my question for you is are there any new traits or patterns you're seeing in today's best Founders that maybe separate them from times past um yeah I mean I think it's you kind of touched on it in saying that uh you know things are changing the the scope and rate of change right is so insane I think um one of the things that that we say was sort of like you know actively seeking is um just high integrity people that are really building for the end game it's like um when you sit draw the curtains and spend your time getting in the weeds and thinking through you know thesis formation like where do I really see this like 5 10 15 years from now it's like um whatever those things I don't care

what you're investing in but you know it's just particularly true and sort of crypto and and uh the future of games and whatnot it's like making sure that those people are kind of um you know philosophically aligned with that um I think is just like the most important thing um you know that I've really been thinking through and uh um I think it is different in um like crypto in particular because there is so much um not tribalism but Divergence of opinion on how this should evolve right everything from like the governance aspects to an actual technological decisions like everyone has really different views um and so it can be super hard to like yeah um find find those people that you know across timing I know that things obviously evolve differently and change and it's like hard to really predict the exact order of events and whatnot but I'd say yeah um finding those high integrity people that are building for the end game sort of as you see it um I think shout out to uh Jose you know ahead of labs actually on on the Delphi Labs side I think they've done an incredible job I mean maybe we'll touch

on it later but uh just of scoping out how they see things unfolding the key areas where it's like deficient in projects or infrastructure actually putting out you know um ideas that they think need to be built and like uh almost like having people gravitate towards those as well has been really cool to see um so yeah I definitely think that's a big one awesome and before we we hopped on I asked you to come up with a list of three or so um examples of modern day Founders that you are seeing absolutely crush it right now in different ways these aren't necessarily your your just your like three favorite Founders I know you have a bunch of favorite Founders that you work with but um I was just curious like could you share like who some of these people are what makes them special and today's changing environment and maybe what we can learn from them totally yeah I think um I mean one one that I always love to mention is uh Robbie from immutable I know you guys have spent a bunch of time with with immutable but

um he's just surprised me on so many occasions with his truly Unapologetic and Relentless hustle like he uh you know has has moved mountains since I've known him so it's been awesome to see um another one you know when you when you ask the question that stood out is uh someone have had the pleasure of knowing for a few years now but we've actually um you know recently invested in what they're working on which is uh edsachi from Geppetto AI they're working on sort of 3D generative stuff and um he's just got this amazing ability to really hone in on like what is sensible to like innovate on and be creative around um and understand that in a space that's obviously as dynamic as spending any time anywhere near AI um figuring out what you should like leave to others like the open source Community to build and like trying to laser in on which the key components are to really like um pull together um and then beyond that just you know tying together a very multi-disciplinary listenary team that you probably wouldn't expect all to come together but it's like this really awesome concoction

for what they're trying to achieve um so yeah here's another one that stands out for sure um I think I then think um will uh Wayne Robb who runs um crypto no crypto is it's called um he's someone who I honestly don't spend as much time as I should with you know we caught up recently and it was it was awesome but uh just from when we first connected and he first told me about this idea he had it was just this like um insane Clarity of vision it's like uh you know not necessarily the most like complex idea in the world it's just like very um well-defined and his ability to kind of yeah as I say that Clarity early on and the fact that that Vision Still Remains intact although obviously there's slight deviations along the way has been amazing to see on the execution side um I don't know whether it counts in terms of founder but we we touched on CCP already but uh Hilmar right I mean obviously the original founding of CCP was 25 years ago whatever now um Hilmar is just one of the most

amazing brains around games I've ever had the privilege of uh of connecting with he's just some kind of like video game philosopher Viking to my mind from Iceland he's uh he's he's pretty special um in terms of yeah just the you know again like Lucidity all of those sort of insights that have been gleaned from uh making some incredibly difficult decisions across that 20 years of running you know the same economy the same game the same instance like the amount of like um high pressure like high implication decisions that they've had to make in terms of like you know rolling back servers or not or like doing things which many times completely pissed the community off like I think um it takes a certain type of character to be able to do that obviously there's more people that were consulted in those decisions but I think he's distilled all the insights from that in such an amazing way and then yeah I mean the desire to sort of embrace new tools and sort of innovate right like um these guys uh looking at the space and in the way they had been and really like soaking up everything they can like um something tells me whatever they

produce is going to be a winning form you know already right they've really uh Gone Gone super deep so yeah those are a few and then one other I'd like to shout out quickly before we move on um is uh Brooks Brown from uh Noor who's sort of pioneered this whole play-fi thesis which we've touched on before I think conceptually in terms of thinking from first principles about how this technology can be used around games it's you know one of the most exciting sort of visions that that we've come across for sure and uh I mean you know a long way to go in terms of actually seeing it come come to life but I think as I say conceptually like enormously exciting and uh very very you can see what comes what's the the 10 second Pitch for play-fi for those who don't know so effectively it's looking at um it's hard to do in 10 seconds but it's a little bit more seconds it's it's all about kind of um the the sanctity of these core game Loops right and how money and any monetary um aspect should never ever touch these core game Loops right all of that should

basically happen on the periphery um it draws on a lot of inspiration from the sports model right so in soccer you don't have people who can you know pay for power-ups to run quicker on the pitch or whatever all of the way that that entire industry is monetized is around the periphery through you know gambling merchandise broadcasting Etc um and so they're basically building the infrastructure to facilitate monetization like that in video games um their higher end sort of ranked game modes uh focused on this idea that risk-free game like gameplay has like ruined gaming right these infinite response it's like lost all meaning as a result and so in many respects you can kind of frame it as this web 3 blood Sports right so people who are the highest competitors who enter these tournaments if you die you're out you're like wait for the whole season wait for the whole tournament it's this idea of introducing real stakes and making you know gameplay meaningful through that again and I think that's a super powerful idea and I think you know um all of the things like provenance

that are afforded by crypto become super interesting in this like new Arena review sports where you know you might own the tombs the tombstone nft from the first ever playified tournament in you know the year 2024 and it like perpetuates it or rather it survives um across time so I think there's so much exciting stuff in there uh it's well worth digging into for people looking for uh some interesting ideas to sink their teeth into cool well thanks for for sharing that and also thanks for sharing your your thoughts on on those Founders one of my favorite Parts about hanging out with you and talking to you peers is that you hang out with all of these people and you're able to to kind of like gleam and distill a lot of the just like the really interesting and cool insights from the people who are like on the most bleeding edge uh and so like what's new and interesting and what we have to look forward to so I hope other other people found found that interesting and I'm sure your answer is probably going to change every so often too as as the world continues to change we'll have to

check back in um in the future but for now let's go ahead and move on to a game called buy sell or hold nothing here is investing advice just to be clear but I'm gonna toss out a bunch of random ideas or concepts or ecosystems or or what have you um and I want you to give me your level of bullishness or bearishness on that idea is what I am saying a buy a cell or a hold and then feel free to you know provide a little bit of why this will be a bit more lightning round uh so we probably won't as well too much on any one of these although we can we can poke in on anything interesting um and you also have no idea what I'm gonna throw at you so this is going to be this is going to be fun so uh to start you know we'll start with an easy one buy sell or hold God of War Ragnarok DLC bye for sure

why why um okay sorry I thought you said we're not going to dwell on them um well I absolutely love those games I think um you know uh Corey balrog is like um such an amazing director I think that first 2018 God of War gripped me uh in a way very few games have um The Last of Us and God of War s tier in my mind I think they're the best to you know narrative games ever created um that really took me on a journey as like gaming as a cinematic medium I will say I thought Ragnarok was somewhat it felt very samey it felt like more of the same from the 2018 one but I loved it so damn much the original one that I love pouring loads of hours into that I actually dropped it after about 15 hours and then picked it up and finished it again but excited to see what comes from them again I just think like I'm paralleled in terms of visual storytelling and uh I really yeah was invested in those characters but you think the the DLC is going to happen I know it didn't happen for the first game I I think it will I think it will I'm uh Holding Out For It Anyway Okay cool so

that's a buy buy solar hold these Solana games ecosystem um bye I'd say I don't my current portfolio definitely didn't reflect that but I think there's been so much exciting stuff happening there I think the bustling nft ecosystem has been really cool to see and was I think I would probably describe the Saga phone as a sort of relative flop um it's been pretty poorly reviewed I think directly it's super interesting right actually engineering your own like Hardware ecosystem and uh all the interesting distribution aspects that come with that so maybe bullish Solana mobile stuff if they can get that off the ground but it's a tool order um so I'll say buy slash hold okay buy solar hold the epic game store becoming the main Distribution Hub for web3 PC games I'm gonna say holes um I'm not sure exactly the difference between a hold of them buy here but uh I'm gonna say a whole I think um obviously they're out of all like big companies I know like they're uh you know pursued

willingness to really lean into like open ecosystems and um all the amazing stuff that comes with that like I really think that they are you know very much on it but it's just so much of what can be really exciting about these games is like a big gap up from enabling third-party blockchain games to push stuff through your store to like actually leaning into you know like on-chain reputation systems like the ability to actually tap into these this amazing um sort of social graph of users if you like to do targeted air drops as a marketing technique all of this kind of [ __ ] like I don't see them doing that anytime soon and when I say anytime soon I'm in for the next five plus years let's say um and therein lies an opportunity so let's see um I'm gonna say hold on that one let's see okay cool and just to clarify by hold like if the idea were a stock or a token you'd be putting your money in it because you're bullish you think it's gonna happen and hold is probably like you're unsure maybe you have some tendency to lean one way or another but you know you're waiting for more

information you got questions um so I think that's that's a fair answer for that one uh buy seller hold fortnite bye I just I just think yeah I mean uh that ecosystem the epic games flywheel that account system like that's not going anywhere I think uefn rolling out recently has been absolutely nuts to see I think looking at stuff like project five you know some of the biggest streamers in the world coming together to leverage uefn to build their own game to invite Community feedback all the things that we harp on about in crypto they're actually you know replicating a lot of that in that space um I think yeah just the advantage the permanent Advantage is going to have in terms of being at the very Forefront of the entire unreal ecosystem is nuts I think the IP Universe they've conducted concocted is completely Next Level and isn't stopping anytime soon again there's more TV shows and movies start integrating this stuff and lastly I've got giant bags in terms of skins and V

bucks I still get like 60 KV bucks in there man it better it better it better continue its Advance um but no I think they recently released in the unreal developer conference that they still had like 70 million monthly actives or whatever it was so um I I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon I think they're very Innovative and I think um yeah like just seeing obviously uefn's one thing but also seeing how the game's evolved into you know zero build mode being more dominant um loads of these interesting creative game modes like uh it's just like you can get lost in that game still the mechanics are dope everything looks beautiful yeah bye sweet buy sell or hold major Western Publishers announcing real web 3 games in the next 12 months how do we qualify major um I I'm gonna say um I'd probably say sell or or hold hold cell border I don't think it's happening in any meaningful way anytime soon okay buy seller hold AI having a larger

impact on the games industry than blockchains um oh it's gonna be way harder to quantify it's also going to happen concurrently it's really hard to say I'd say a hold on that one um I think it's doing amazing [ __ ] I think it's giving small teams insane leverage I think um it's hard to isolate so much of what's going to be exciting about AI to just AI as in Creator tooling broadly is just completely collapsing like the ability for a single developer to build something that's utterly mind-blowing it's not just AI driving that so I'm going to say hold because I'm unsure sounds good and as a quick aside here just because I'm curious I know you mentioned um investing in I think it was Geppetto the the the company um so it seems like Delphi you're spending some time on um on AI stuff too even Beyond just some of the the web 3 Roots you want to comment on that change of focused at all quickly well absolutely I think um I

think well projects like that you could deem to be very adjacent right like there's going to be some sort of overlapping in the way um that we traditionally invest in things but yeah I mean this is undoubtedly like uh one of the most exciting forces to be Unleashed um you know ever and it's like uh you know a big part of my time over the past few months maybe longer has been spent yeah trying to get smart on that space understand how this [ __ ] Works understand you know um who's doing interesting [ __ ] I still think understanding like how and where value capture happens is like who knows it's really difficult but I think um amazing teams that have a super Clear Vision not about trying to Pioneer nuts technology but like figure out what's actually fun what's actually like what's beautiful how can we make experiences that are like engaging and moving like leveraging these new tools like that's a much clearer uh thing to be able to take a swing at then you know investing in key sort of AI infrastructure um I'd say like if I were investing in key AI

infrastructure I'd be deferring to people who are much more in the weeds have the network who are much smarter but um I fundamentally believe that there's a really exciting intersection between crypto and AI to be had you know very surface level basic things like you know cryptographic authentication of media as deep fakes become more rampant and they start to you know what was it someone released a video an AI made video of the Pentagon getting blown up the other day and some stock swung a bunch and then uh turns out that some people traded that news and then someone had actually spoofed the whole thing to begin with it's like the whole thing's a mess there's stuff there there's stuff to do with um you know obviously like trying to coordinate uh distributed compute networks in terms of yeah gpus and whatnot like there's a lot of exciting stuff coming um there's like uh zero knowledge machine learning stuff like how can you actually teach models without revealing information like I think there's a massive intersection there so that's something we're trying to get smart on and um you know we'll definitely be deferring to much smarter people on more core stuff but uh fascinating time to be alive every day as a privilege

absolutely let's get back to buy seller hold buy sell or hold a fully on-chain game breaking out and let's call it like at least a semi mainstream way before 2025. ah um hold I I want to say bye but it's like as I say just like a state of the art in terms of ux that was a long way to go and I think this is where the uh the real Wizards are you know spending time like innovating on the infrastructure lattice who I mentioned just put out you know this framework for actually building on chain applications which um solves a lot of the technical hurdles so I think this is very much like build a territory for the next few years uh so I'm gonna say holds hold yeah hold okay sounds good uh buy seller hold land in the metaverse I I mean I've never really been that excited um about just vanilla land stuff I think there's lots of cool [ __ ] that could be done I think they're cool like token models you can build I think the idea of

you know doing stuff like Dynamic land models um there's one project called uh Nifty Island which actually should be uh launching later this year or at least some playable stuff um and basically they allow you to collateralize your plot of land to determine how large it appears on a map I think models like that kind of make sense and there's like tons of things to experiment with um but just like vanilla land as a concept this like you know virtual real estate Gold Rush that we saw I've never really thought it was that uh interesting so I'm going to say so okay uh would tend to agree buy sell or hold the meta Quest 3 and Apple's XR headset which is being announced today as we're recording yeah um yeah it's a turning point sorry sorry go ahead sorry uh buy seller hold like these devices being the turning point for XR adoption I mean obviously apple has a history of coming sort of like relatively late to the game but absolutely nailing it I just don't think a three thousand dollar um but you know entry price which is

what it's been reported to be is like going to be that feasible for like more mainstream consumption I think obviously the very tightly linked kind of uh software Hardware pipeline that Apple has is going to unlock some truly insane [ __ ] and I think for many people it's going to be a like that next wave of like you know aha sort of like holy [ __ ] moment with this stuff um but and obviously by the way just AR kit which they've been rolling out you know using the lidar sensors and stuff and phones like they're building like this insane ecosystem that I think is going to unlock some really powerful experiences but I don't know whether this is the inflection point all the way back to the Oculus Kickstarter I've been like this is it and it never is um the metaquest 3 specs look nuts very impressed I didn't even realize that it was like uh 2020 that the Quest 2 released so that's actually a long time when they're churning through how many billion dollars a year on R D um I salute our conrades at um meta uh for putting all that money into the space um I I I think they're probably like I don't know let's say like 50 to 100

million handsets uh headsets rather they might be able to sell but I don't think that really qualifies as like inflection point yet I still think um content has to catch up even to where we are right now and uh it still feels like too many people are kind of um you know use the thing for a month and love it oh my God it's amazing get all your friends to buy it and then no one logs in again I still feel like we're there probably for another couple years yeah so uh so yeah okay but tends to agree still excited to see what all this is going to be and still going to put money into into things to play around for sure so I'm I'm buying the products but I I think I agree with you at the sell Point more broadly um buy sell or hold the latest lingo free to own I don't know I I try not to like overly index on the exact nomenclature that people keep inventing and churning through um I think uh directly it like made a lot of sense in terms of like a marketing tactic like growth hacking

thing I think fundamentally the idea of Distributing nfts for free to users is like a hook like an engagement way is like a very sensible and interesting onboarding mechanic that I'd say Buy on I think um everything graduating towards like us referring to free to own like we do you know free to play or whatever like absolutely not um uh and I'm really excited to see what limit break obviously is kind of the Pioneers are doing in this space but um honestly felt a little underwhelmed after the um the whole sort of Super Bowl advert and whatnot like I'm excited to see what comes later this year in terms of like token standard Innovation and stuff they've been working on they're building a lot of cool infrastructure pieces which I'm liking the look of so let's see so in summary um by the idea of free distribution of nfts as like an onboarding mechanic um and then sell the name catching on and hold limit break there you go that was very very well-rounded answer I had maybe

something that's nice that I've been thinking about too is it's been a while since we've had one of these new terms pop up for you free to own actually pops up quite a while ago and I feel like if this were a year or two ago it'd already be like three terms later Beyond it so I don't know what that says about the space or anything but I think it's time for something someone needs to come up with something new uh we have to put our heads together yes let's do it um uh one last one for you before we we start to wrap up um buy sell or hold any of the top 10 games by nft transaction volumes staying on that list in three years and so quickly the list from a couple weeks ago it was other deed block Lords so rare hvmtl Gods Unchained Coda Pixelmon axi infinity and the sandbox in three years yes well I mean those stay on that top 10 list I'd be on the border of buy but probably

it's yeah I probably say bye yeah I think I think there's at least one in there that has a good chance of it but I won't say which you won't say which oh that was gonna be my follow-up that's okay fine I I will I will I think I think it would be so rare I think so res just like um anchored themselves on a very sensible model it's like you know not um shooting for the moon doing anything crazy that's gonna alienate people I think um they're obviously anchored around Sports and particular soccer is their first sort of one that they're focused on which is like for some reason billions of people are obsessed with this thing and watch it all the time um so yeah I don't think I think they've got a really good chance of of yeah like uh sticking around to be honest okay well actually one more uh since we're on it then we'll then we'll move on buy solar hold the board ape Yacht Club gaming ecosystem and I'm asking this because I've I've heard a bunch of different takes on it curious what yours is honestly it's not something I've ever been particularly enamored with um I uh I think the coolest thing for me

to see was just you know the actual like um dollar value of the prize pools in that very basic game they put together but even that got hacked and people were exploiting it and whatnot um I think like the demo that they did with the improbable stuff like was cool to see loads of avatars running around but I'm not entirely sure what the actual core game Loops gonna be that actually drives retention over time um obviously they're very well funded um and have you know a lot of smart people in the arena now so um I'd love to see something really cool come out of it but I'd say yeah my gut feel on it still is that it's like you know a bit kind of overhyped maybe okay uh sounds good well thanks for for rolling with that game with me it's fun to get your your quick takes on a bunch of stuff across the the full tech gaming web3 ecosystem there um before we wrap up I do want to spend a couple minutes um talking about Delphi um and specifically just like what's going what's going on at Delphi that's new and interesting especially in this

the world of games and kind of the intersection with web 3. um anything exciting the the team is cooking up over there yeah so on the gaming front um I mean we touched on it earlier but uh I mean have a bunch of the kind of companies that we backed you know starting to approach soft launches and more playable stuff so actually got everyone together uh for a sort of internal portfolio session the other day and walk through you know I think it was seven different topics of cool pillars that are um everyone's kind of having to confront right everything from token listings and like regulatory advice to um balancing these economies to uh the infrastructure and scalability solutions and so on so I think that was really exciting to see you know what a insanely talented group of people there is and and what a privilege it is really to be you know uh trying to figure out what happens next with all of them um so that was super exciting I think um part of what we're gonna do around more of these sort of soft launches happening as well is uh actually trying to spin up a few more streams on like twitch I think um this content format of like you know

playing through things with a founder and talking through design decisions is is super cool so I'm excited to uh start toying with that um and then yeah obviously keeping up our coverage in terms of deep Dives and whatnot uh broadly um so yeah that's what's going on in Delphi gaming side um and then yeah broad broadly at Delphi um research business has a ton of cool [ __ ] being dropped all the time in terms of uh in the portal these kind of you know no code low code um chart Builders uh you know interesting ways to incorporate real-time charts into like reports so you can see how a thesis has played out since it was actually written um a bunch of interesting Unity sort of driven stuff that's going to be introduced as well so excited to see [ __ ] dropping all the time there um and then on the labs front um I think it's actually today the cohort of people who are moving uh from the hackathon into the accelerator um is is sort of being announced uh I touched on it earlier on but yeah effectively put out um you know these kind of rfps if you like but requests

for projects instead of proposals um and yeah all these key sort of Primitives and pieces of infrastructure that the labs team thinks is is kind of missing from the space and so I think that's a really cool way of again like attracting Builders to ideas and like actually helping with the ideation process because there's a lot of amazingly talented people out there but um you know figuring out where to even start and knowing who's building what is really tricky so excited to see what comes from that I think that's running for a few weeks before the final finalists are announced um and then yeah on on you know the Venture side we were sort of deploying as ever um super excited to have so many sort of Giga brains around the table making sure we don't uh stray too far from the path of righteousness um and so yeah continue to be um excited about everything we're doing there you know of course gaming and Beyond um and yeah it's just uh privilege to have lots of smart people in the ring um most people with you know proper skin in the game so I think that's a pretty important piece for building um the kind of relationships that we want to with Founders right is sort of investing your own capital is a

different lens through which to kind of explore all of this through and I uh yeah running and really enjoying it awesome well as I've told you peers I've always been impressed and inspired by what the the Delphi team has built across all of the dimensions you all operate in so definitely rooting you all on from the sidelines and excited to see where all this is going to go next for you all um to to wrap up just final question Piers if anyone wants to to reach out where can they find you on Twitter peers kicks um I'm uh still probably most active on on Twitter yeah awesome sounds good well awesome Piers this was a ton of fun uh to roll through all of this today and hopefully a bit of a lighter tone on some of the the web 3 topics in particular for for our audience and hopefully uh you all listening had a lot of fun as well so Piers it's always a pleasure to chat and learn from you thanks for coming on likewise man thank you so much for having me

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