Paying players to play

[Music] welcome to the novic 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 pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu management and more than 500 Investments across the US Europe and Asia with its dedicated gaming practice light speed gaming the firm is investing from over $7 billion in early and growth stage

Capital making it by far the largest fund focused on gaming and interactive technology Light speed's Team combines deep expertise in gaming with a global multi-stage investment platform and a culture that truly puts Founders first selected Investments include epic games snap and stability AI as well as game designers and producers who led the creation of titles like fortnite Call of Duty League of Legends valerant Starcraft 2 and many more for more information simply go to gaming. lsvp docomo everyone I'm your host Dev Becker and today I'm delighted to be joined by Ben Cousins Chief strategy officer of zbd and Paul West the founder of fum games maker of Bitcoin miner zbd itself is an API for rewarding players with Bitcoin using the lightning Network which is a pretty cool thing that we'll be talking about a little bit and today in general we're going to be exploring the potential for games that provide Financial reward

to players so why don't we just kind of go over backgrounds a little bit here so Ben why don't you start and go over your background a little B and the origin of zbd as well as what you do today sure thank you Devin um so I've got a background originally as a teenager in games development I moved into Finance in my early 20s for my sins and uh spent about a decade helping games companies raise money and then later investing in games companies uh at a VC fund called lakar and it was at lakar that I met the founding team of zbd and I I led their seed in series a before becoming so bullish in the business I actually joined it after the series a um and now I help game developers on board to our technology awesome Paul why don't you tell us a little bit about fum uh how your background how you ended up starting it and what you guys are doing today maybe besides Bitcoin miner as well sure hey Devon and uh hello to all the listeners so I'm Paul West I'm founder of fum as you said uh fum games is a mobile game Studio that makes Idol games and we'll get into that a little bit more uh detail later but my

background is I've been in mobile games for about 13 years but probably like all your listeners a player of games all my life and I founded F games about seven years ago I believe to uh yeah to create chart Topp in hits was the idea portrait mobile simple uh games that give you real rewarding sessions short Snappy ones and yeah and then we're a zebedy partner a very happy one so I can ask why I'm here well cool so I mean I'm sure people wondering why you two specific speically and and obviously it's that connection uh that you guys are using zbd so why don't you just tell us a little bit about how fums using zbd and what how that's worked out benefits things like that sure so we use zeid across a couple of games and Bitcoin minor is our biggest one that people may know of so it's a very simple integration where basically players can earn real Bitcoin as they play the game so they're microtransactions very small amounts of Bitcoin but we send thousands a second out to players who are playing the game uh that's one of our games with it we've also got another integration in

a game called Spacey which is like a space mining game which has a a very very similar integration and that's also an interesting one to look at as well well cool uh so why don't you just give us uh you know kind of a broad overview of some useful case studies and things like that uh for CBD Ben and and you know outside of just Bitcoin miner who else has been using it successfully and what have they been able to do with it sure yeah so you know when we got started uh zbd was a general purpose Bitcoin API it was and we were bringing it to the games industry really looking for the product Market fit for the technology we we knew it was powerful and we had ideas of how it could be used but you know it was only in starting to work with game developers that we really uncovered the most popular use cases and where the market has pulled us is really into uh Bitcoin rewards in mobile games um similar to what Paul is doing you know the vast majority of developers on zbd are sharing you know Revenue back to the player in exchange for more retention and more engagement in their

games and we've worked we've got you know probably over 70 developers building on the platform at the moment and we're on you know hundreds of games uh out there powered by our technology um it's pretty consistent across the board now and we're we're feeling really confident in the in the technology in so far as essentially every game developer has experienced double digit uplift in player retention and engagement from uh from using our technology to give out Bitcoin rewards and that ranges from Mark games to Square Enix to Thum you know and Pa on the call um and we're continuing to expand outwards you know hopefully we'll be announcing some very exciting public uh Partnerships in the coming months awesome uh I mean could for for those of you uh or for those out there that aren't necessarily familiar with maybe some of the the technical terms or the aspects of what you guys are specifically doing with the lightning Network could you just give a very quick you know you know short explanation of what the lightning network is and and how it enables specifically what you're doing do we

yeah definitely um you know we we we're on a mission to make sure that all of this crypto stuff is is demystified and one of our rules around that is keep it simple so you know we only use Bitcoin because it's the most popular cryptocurrency we don't have to actually you know Market make for the cryptocurrency we don't have to bolster it ourselves we just use it as a tool um historically bitcoin's being known for being quite slow and clunky uh the lightning network is a layer two on bitcoin to use crypto terminology uh very importantly it's not a blockchain it's like a a big pool of liquid Bitcoin that can be spent instantly I hope that's understandable but you you know without going too hyperbolic um it essentially enables Bitcoin to move at regular internet speed so you're able to do you know millions of transactions uh a second there's actually no upper bound it's bandwidth constraints rather than like blockchain constraints that limit lightning um and it's very very good for microtrans which is why it's well suited

to the games industry awesome and I know that's Bitcoin in general still been kind of a Hot Topic through this year you know with the the prices going up the ETFs and uh even the recent halfing so definitely like very interesting to see a good use case for it in games specifically and from the game developer perspective Paul how does rewarding players financially fit in with like traditional user acquisition uh which is generally like marketing right it's just a fancy term for advertising how does this really fit into that yeah so it's an interesting one because when we integrated Ze we expected to you know in our marketing message earn free Bitcoin would be like a no-brainer like okay our cost per installs will crash to rock bottom prices uh and you know it will be it we super high clickr rates and very effective that actually wasn't the wasn't the biggest needle mover for us it was roughly like the same price or maybe even slightly a price increase um but what what we did see was like the other side so once the users had

installed they were very very sticky like retention was through the roof and like you know double digit even triple digit like number wasn't an over exaggeration when we integrated this so that that's kind of been the biggest needle mover for us another thing that is relevant when it comes to talking about marketing is of course you mentioned the the ETFs the the Haring and all the things that have affected Bitcoin in the past 12 months that's helped us sign ific anly as well just more people getting awareness getting educated on the subject of Bitcoin and and that makes our marketing kind of more it converts easier we see when Bitcoin hits like you know alltime High more people want to install our game and that that's on the marketing side that we're paying for but also just organically of users discovering the game search in the App Stores so it's been like a win-win not the win I expected to be honest better does other people using zbd actually have any effect then on the user acquisition

meaning like competition in that sense of advertising you know free Bitcoin Rewards or is it beneficial where kind of people could see oh there's multiple games doing this this is like maybe a more legit thing I I I I would hypothesize yes um obviously Zeb is a platform which promotes the games that they have on the platform so naturally if a game comes in from another game and they discover oh Bitcoin miner looks cool or Spacey looks interesting like that user is probably well the friction is much lower to try us so uh yeah I we we do see users coming from from the product itself uh as in the Zeb app and they're obviously great quality because they're almost primed and ready to to play so you said you know it may sometimes maybe make user acquisition maybe slightly more expensive but it's improving retention a lot so I guess the question then is when you're improving that retention are you seeing like boost Ste TV and actual benefits from that retention and if so like is that really compensating for just not just the the increase in UA like for you specifically but the broader UA problem like is it just kind of fixing that for you or is

it more just you're kind of having to juggle both yes so my background uh I probably should have touched on is also ad Network so I worked for ad colony in Europe um for quite a few years and that was very much like a CPI battle even then like how can we get the lowest cost per install to you to drive the most amount of volume to reach chart positions or or whatever it was and what we've done as a business and the industry has has was way ahead of us on this is actually pivot from we don't really care what the CPI is as long as the return on ad spends there and that's been a bit of an industry mind uh mindset shift so now we don't even look at CPI I couldn't tell you what they are in the US for us when we do UA we just look at okay X Out Y in and is y bigger uh and fortunately most of the time it is so um yeah definitely uh an uplift on LTV from integrating this I mean we we talked about retention that's a great indicator of LTV but we actually dropped a stat I think in this case study we did

with with Ben which is if a user successfully withdraws Bitcoin from our game there are seven times more valuable to us as a user in terms of retention in terms of administation in terms of Ina purchase so it's a it's a Nob brainer it's actually a god metric for us for our business is to try and get users to work with de and integrate uh integrate a wallet into our game so I'm curious that if if you're seeing an uplift in LTV from giving out Financial rewards which and then you're actually giving out money you're seeing more money coming in how is that like increasing like how are you giving what how is giving away money specifically getting them to spend more uh my belief is it's a psychological thing so you know 99.9% of the games you play won't give you anything back but when a user plays our game and sees oh wow I've actually earned something and we're talking like fractions of a scent sometimes I'm not talking like lifechanging money in any way nothing we do in Bitcoin man is going to change your life do not quit your job disclaimer in here um but but

what we do do what I think it does do is kind of break someone's the third wall with the with the player oh I've got something back like straight up front without even watching an ad without even spending any money this is a cool thing it's a revenue share with the player this is kind of what was promised uh you know so I think that that helps and then you have the belief right and you know most of our Revenue comes from advertising so users are sticking around and they're engaging with more ads because we're sharing that Revenue back with the player so it's kind of a self fulfilling um prophecy maybe in that sense it's just it that for me is the biggest attraction as a player that's how I would feel well cool I guess in that sense rewarded ads might mean just more than just in app like items right so I mean that's definitely a good way to look at right where you're kind of returning some of the ad Revenue to them even if it's just a fraction of it right like a lot more motivating to watch an ad and less of kind of an annoyance I especially if they're opting into it but I wanted to get a little bit more into the Strategic stuff um like so from a

strategic perspective When developing the game or deciding how to use uh the zbd platform how are you deciding like what to reward who to reward uh how rewards get distributed because obviously you can't just give away everything right because this is not an app items where you could just give away infinite because it's infinite items you actually have to decide okay we're giving away this much money for doing this kind of action to this kind of person how are you kind of strategizing all that yeah you'd probably expect a really scientific sophisticated answer here um I may disappoint you um so how basically when we set this up we we put in what we thought would be a sensible amount to not break the bank right that's what we wanted to do like okay H how much can we in how much how much can we give away and sustain growth um we actually launched globally with this uh well every country that was supported by Zeb at at the time and we found the biggest learning was it's not equal what

everyone contributes to the game right it's not rocket science but users in the US will contribute a lot a lot more than some of the kind of Emerging Markets so then we had to do almost like a country level uh distribution for the Bitcoin so you know certain markets that contribute more will earn more as they play the game faster that is um the only level we go to we don't look at okay well this user spent $1,000 in the game they deserve more Bitcoin and for me that starts to move towards well people are kind of you know it's getting closer to like almost an exchange level okay well they're almost buying Bitcoin at that sense so we just keep it very level um the only literally the only difference we have is country country touring and even then it's very very primitive um so yeah we we we we tried to educate the players that it's a fun thing it's a fun game first it's almost a USP that you get Bitcoin as a side bonus reward this game is not about making lots of money this game is about learning about Bitcoin I think we estimate like 75% did this survey but like 75% of our

players are new to bitcoin that's really cool that for us is like oh we we're pro Bitcoin so that's um that's a exciting metric for us but it's about little Snippets of U micro fractions of Bitcoin to to almost get like a dopamine hit of oh cool I got something back which you know I've played thousands and thousands of games and it's kind of a bit of a unique novel thing I think well cool I me uh I I guess this is a quick question like you're talking about other countries outside the US which you know there's a lot of ones that are usually targeted for us acquisition but don't tend to spend a lot are you seeing any benefit to this in terms of actually increasing the spending in say tier 2 three countries that might be more difficult yes we do see an increase globally when we've when we launched this no doubt the challenge is the balancing of it and realistically I think so some inside data if we add up country if we rank our countries by

revenue and add countries two down to 10 that doesn't equal one us so just to see like in terms of scale the US is the is the one we' kind of just primarily focused on um and the other thing I would say is it's it's a you can almost see a different player mindset in Emerging Markets versus the US like I think that the users in the US kind of get what we're trying to do which is is a fun game with these non-life changing rewards whereas and this is you just proba economics but if you go to some of the Emerging Markets people will play in my opinion too much like and I don't even mean we're losing Bitcoin there it's just you know people will have multiple devices uh on all the time doing it while they're working constantly just trying to mine the game which obviously then you're not playing it becomes something else so that's one thing that we've had to kind of be aware be aware of and in fact you know certain certain markets have actually have we've disabled just because it was kind of not it was net loss for us as a

business because they was Min so much but also it just didn't seem super healthy how much people were were bot farming it um that's why when we share our numbers of our Like You Know da people are surprised as a as almost like a web 3 Studio that it's all in the US because that's typically not what you see of web 3 games you we've got 40,000 uh daily active users I think it's like 85% of them are in one markets so that's a bit of um we're always like the ugly duckling of web 3 I I'm almost curious too like how it's received in you know a country like El Salvador which had that whole thing if I remember correctly of trying to like make Bitcoin more part of the economy where like now that is more money to them and not some abstract thing uh but we have to get into that especially if you're not targeting that market but you did bring up something that I think is important to address when you're talking about net losses and things like that obviously with financial incentives brings more incentive to do things that are not just playing the game so there's you know Bots there's multi-accounting obviously this is going going to be a little more on the Android side of

things but that's also where especially when you're getting outside the US you're going to be hitting a lot more of that so Ben how are you guys on your side especially trying to handle this or even advising the the game developers on how to handle botting multi accounting especially when there's emulators and all kinds of things especially with idle games right where they're just can leave it running on their computer and things like that great question yeah po Paul and I have uh put heads together very often on dealing with game security um you know I I think there's the way I would contextualize and frame this is yes indeed when you give out free money Along come the Bots and the exploiters and we very much and very consciously chose to tackle this head on rather than act like it wasn't an issue I mean I'm sure during the first uh or the last cycle as web 3 gaming kind of became popular you saw a lot of the headlines around how 40 to 50% of traffic was estimated to be Bots um we fortunately I don't think we got as bad as that but we

definitely saw a lot of botting in the early days and it it we treated it as a learning uh sort of a learning phase in the company um one of the co-founders of zbd a guy called Chris Moss has been developing Bitcoin games since about 2013 and he's very very clued up on what players do to try and crack the games and we've spent I'd say this is going to be an ongoing thing for the rest of cbd's time but we've spent the last 18 months in particular investing very heavily in security um we don't talk for obvious reasons publicly too much about what we do but uh I can tell you that there's security at sort of every layer of the stat um from account creation to verifying code Integrity to making sure things like the phone is in someone's hand using the accelerometer making sure that tapping on the screen is actually

happening uh we're doing a ton of things behind the scenes and uh Paul has has very graciously and very patiently worked with us on this and I I you know nowadays we're very confident saying we've got botting down to single-digit percentage points on across the whole platform um we you know we're really actually quite proud of this this is why we talk about it openly and we're going to continue to you know make security and providing high quality real users two games develop as a cool part of the product yeah I'm sure Paul's a bit of a ginea pig like I said being an idol game makes it even more of a Target right because there's a lot of uh a ways to participate without actively doing things all the time and I and I think that's not just you know in that market there's also like a lot of um the RPGs especially coming out of the East tend to have like a lot of auto play and things like that and they've tried to dip into crypto and it can get really tricky like I've seen that with the mirror games especially running into problems with being a very bot Centric game just due to the like autoplay sort of of thing that that's a bit more of RPGs out there but the other problem

that I imagine that you know I wanted to talk about a little bit that especially now after the the having becomes even more of a question which is um handling of of instability of Price Right This is why some people sometimes are maybe a little worried about using crypto is you know as much as i' love to say the dollar is stable it's Stabler than you know something like crypto and because of that you're giving out money that actually may change in value the second after you give it out or the second before you give it out um in general obviously you guys are giving out small amounts but how are you guys handling or thinking about and we'll talk this to you to to Ben first uh that fluctuating price especially when there's like these bull cycles where it can go up very rapidly or down very rapidly just sometimes even in Flash crashes yeah I'll I'll definitely let Paul speak to specifically what they do as as you know we we do enable developers to manage things themselves if that's what they want but we also offer to manage and handle the Bitcoin Rewards for developers if if that's preferable um

you know we can we've built the system in such a way that you can fix uh dollar based prices and the Bitcoin Bitcoin becomes the variable there that's um probably for the majority of developers the path they should opt for because you continue to operate and think in dollars and you know the Bitcoin just adjusts accordingly um but other you know some developers do want to pay out fixed amounts of Bitcoin and they think about you know first in first out accounting or first in last out accounting um we provide transaction exports and you know we can we could help with a lot of that um our SDK which is coming out is all dollar based so that there's again mitigating that volatility but um you know I I would say that we do encourage developers to think and reward in Bitcoin because it is what is attracting the players and if you yes Bitcoin is volatile but if you look at it on anytime Horizon longer than say 18

months it's had a compounded annual return of like 70% since its Inception um so you know I think Paul actually tweeted the the stat that the players who've been playing Bitcoin miners since the the beginning of the integration they've now made something like north of $250 from the game and a and a chunk of that is price appreciation that that's what bitcoin's good at um you know it's it's a it's a safe haven against ever inflating fear currencies so um that's that is the appeal but um I hope that answers your question you know it's we try to we try to cater for both sides of the equation I guess in some way then you're almost saying that that playing Bitcoin minor these things could be seen as investment in time uh that could pay off bigger later you know if assuming you just kind of hoard your rewards and how bitcoin price goes up uh Paul how do you think about this yeah sure so um in terms of the security oh in terms of the uh sorry price fluctuation side um we've kind of had it quite clear on our heads of um what how we wanted to handle this

which is almost regardless of the price of Bitcoin uh the player is technically earning the same fiia uh at at the time right so when when Bitcoin rockets in price um we lower the rewards which is Satoshi we get out obviously fra Satoshi is a fraction of a Bitcoin um 100 millionth of a Bitcoin so we lower the payout rates of those um and when we launched the game it wasn't even server side authorative it was client it was like you know it was out in the wild and and that was when it was you know you should have played it then because you could have exp there that bit then but um but since then loads of loads of security updates but also uh the ability to uh react to the market almost live so we you know we're not sopis in reaction instantly when the market prices change but we have controls internally which can go okay well the pric has tripled and the in the last 12 months therefore

we need to you know divide the the rewards by three um but that's it's kind of a it sounds like a like a challenge and a bit of a headache but actually is quite a fun part of this like managing this product because you know it like Ben highlighted on my twe it it really did does reward people for constantly playing the game like you play it through the lows and you play it through the highs um and then actually rewards you m much more when you play in the lows um because hey when this high again obviously you're seeing the the appreciation so that's that's what's quite been a quite cool thing about this this game actually is seeing the players who have been around since the start who kind of react that way the other thing I would add is there is a you know we like to say we're a very player first Studio we try to do everything for the players so communicating suddenly oh the Satoshi rate has dropped um you know by we never do it straight to a third is a very very big jump but um even when you see it go down players instant reaction is oh why am I earing less oh some money grab and you know all that kind of reaction but what we found is you know we've got

150,000 people in Discord now like who who played the game we've got 2 million players they are they they explain the logic like guys if the price goes up that high to sustain the product the the payout need to go down that's just the reality of economics and the business model of this product so um what's been great is just seeing all the players like who play the game like defend it when we do it because it's logic uh of why it's happened and that's kind of what's quite cool about our community I think so I guess that brings up the question and I'm not sure if this would be for for you or bad in terms of uh how it's handled but the the timing in terms of when you give out there's rewards right there's there's delays I would imagine so it's like if I'm seeing the price of Bitcoin going up for example I can't I would assume go in and start playing the game and try and quickly get rewards to try and catch it on the you know on the up and be able to like suddenly make more than you know I was because you were giving out a fixed dollar amount based off of kind of where it's at right now how does the timing work is there like delays to sort of sus out you know

suspect Behavior is there you know like reward schedules things like that uh I can take this one Ben but feel free to add after but I I uh we don't delay payouts like you you can download the game and earn Bitcoin within 30 seconds um if if You' got a Zeb wallet already definitely you can I don't know how long the Zeb sign up for L take spend but it's not very long so so basically we don't have like minimum withdrawals or like we need you know and that's quite the benefit of the microtransactions right just for context for your listeners the maximum you can earn from Bitcoin miner a month based on current bitcoin prices as of today is uh around just over $10 a month and that's if you if you're maxing so just I just want to give that context because it also takes a while to get to that point to be able to do that so this isn't like you know your maybe your typical like coin token that could go crazy and then people are going to make NF you know earn like thousands from an nft uh price boom that's the reality and and we set that expectation as early as we can really with players Even in our marketing it's

like you're not going to get rich playing this game so um with that said that's why we're not that fussed about like being super reaction to the pricing because you know players are inning sense and you know sure if all the US gathered together and went right let's hammer it today because bitcoin's react you know doubled on price that could be an issue but yeah that that that well maybe that's a good thing that happens um we'll get more players just to add a little more color to what you know f says are the where the lightning network is just fantastic is around the instantaneity of it and you know coming back to that microtransaction piece as well and how you don't get rich you know playing these games that is the whole point you know W wave one of of web 3 was like hey this is going to make you absurdly wealthy and it was totally unsustainable economics as we've all learned and know um what we focused on instead was you know the gaming Market that rewarded things in games are a huge

component of game monetization whether it's ads or IP or in just gameplay to incentivize behavior and it's linked to you know the human dopamine response you you feel happy when you get a prize so we strongly strongly encourage developers and most of the system is built this way to reward instantly and that's why we've also built the amount of security we've built around the product just to you know mitigate the risk of of any payment fraud or exploit of the platform so we can continue to give this instant instant payment instant dopamine hereit uh and feeling that actually the game is doing what it's promised you know if you compare um last thing I'd say on this is if you compare you know real money reward games cash based Bingo whatever it might be the gotcha that tends to lead these games to have like one star reviews in the App Store stuff is that you see that you've got say $5 and then you go to withdraw and it goes say oh actually you've got to wait till you make about

$30 and you realize that's about 24 months of gameplay and so you rage quit and delete the app on one star it you know these games do what they say they do they give you Bitcoin in 10 to 15 seconds like Paul said it's it's it's it's real it does what it says on the tin and it's very simple um and I I'm a big believer that if you give people you know what you say you're going to give them then they reward you with their loyalty so and this is probably a question for you Ben then kind of following up on that which is around um obviously you can't just give Bitcoins from nothing right you have to have Bitcoins to be able to give those fractions out and things like that um and then dealing with price fluctuations could affect this even more which is how are you guys looking at like uh having this pool of Bitcoins to give rewards from because you're having to give rewards for all these different games uh like how are the games then paying like what's the relationship and how you're managing that sort of Bitcoin Capital to reward out because I imagine it's coming from your guys' site uh or is it like the actual games themselves have their sort of individual accounts that they're

Distributing from and you like top them up how does all that work when it comes to managing the Bitcoins for these games sure so couple of things I touched on there you know Paul for example manages their own Wallet account but the way the zebedy platform works is you have a master developer account think of that like your company checking account and then you have game wallets so per project per game you have a wallet to that game and you you move funds between those so that you know things are secure and you've not got a big honey pot um in terms of funding the Bitcoin for those wallets as I as I mentioned before we can do that for you and the reward payout we we we don't just drain our our Bitcoin that would obviously be an unsustainable business and we wouldn't be around very long um we you know everything has to be linked to revenue generation just as uh Bitcoin minor is linked to revenue Generation Um you know so we we feel very confident managing the rewards for the bulk of casual games

within mobile you know if we were to deal with a developer who's got a player LTV you know north of $50 or something then we're going to strongly advise that they handle the payouts themselves because we're not going to be able to sustain a sufficiently high payout rate to match user expectations of what rewards should or could be um so developers who do that do tend to opt to manage things themselves and you know in the long run as any relationship with us develops we encourage developers to move that way because it gives you more freedom and more granularity around you know optimizing your ltvs optimizing payouts Etc um I don't know Paul if you have any different perspective there but that's how we kind of see it on the zbd side no yeah exactly um you know I think you you touched on you know earlier winning trust and attention like that that's the two things that we try to do and you know I would say w through gam so far hasn't always delivered on on that trust and attention building at least sustainably um so we're trying to

take that approach of you know if we can under promise and overd deliver we will win that trust and win that player's attention and loyalty which is the main thing we're after so um yeah that that's kind of our our approach to how we do this well well then this uh question is for you Paul like kind of the game developer side then uh you know obviously a lot of this talk has been around Bitcoin specifically and uh I think some of that's due to you know the advantages Benes on the lightning Network side and just maybe as he's mentioned in some other past interviews familiarity with Bitcoin but what potential do you see from the game developer perspective for rewarding players in forms other than Bitcoin like nfts or other layer ones like ethereum salana whatever or even Layer Two that might be a little cheaper to reward out uh or even just like specific game specific tokens or other kinds of tokens just these other forms of rewards that are still somewhat financially related but maybe aren't Bitcoin what what potential do you see there yeah for for us it's um you know it's uh demand Supply thing so you know if you go to

anyone in the world who knows crypto and say what coin would you like I think people would say most people would Lo lean to bitcoin personally um because it's just more of the sure bet at least in my view so um that's why we chose Bitcoin it's the poster child right it's the first it's the digital gold it's the standard um that said you know we get many requests oh please can you do a salana miner please can you do a doge Miner like and um for us that's kind of a you know uh that removes our focus of what we're trying to do we're just trying to build and maintain being the biggest Bitcoin game in the world because we think you know the bezel thing is what's around in five years what's what rather than um what's going to change in five years what's not going to change in five years bitcoin's still going to be here it's probably going to be worth more than it is now that's not Financial advice but uh and also it's you know games need to be fun so that that's kind of our approach on it not to Never Say Never but um the you know the world doesn't need another token in my view so you know a gaming token would never be

something that we'd do um nfts are interesting like I I'm not uh against them in anyway but I don't see the player value add for us as as a as a game right now I think we're as a studio in this space of like web 2.1 so when the really kickass web 3 games come out because I I believe there will be one and it probably you know probably have all these things I've just mentioned I see almost as us like the way to help get to that you know we could be the advertising platform for those games um that's what you know more what we're interested in building because we have the probably the highest concentration of crypto curious players so um yeah that so for my sense I think there's promise there but I don't think it's been delivered yet so I'm curious to see what smarter people than me will do well we'll see if we'll see if uh if bed's one of those uh because I'm curious what from a business perspective then uh like from kind of the top down and like I imagine you guys continue to explore and see what other spaces make sense for you guys to do um I I got to imagine you've

looked into that right so what are your kind of General thoughts at least you know both right now and maybe like a little forward looking on what the space looks like for rewarding players maybe outside of what you're doing even if like it's just oh hey is there something the equivalent of the lightning Network for that other thing yeah that that is a a good way to frame it I'd say so we you know uh how would I so I'm just trying to collect my thoughts um we have I have no issue and we as a business have no issue with you know folks paying out other tokens eth salana or whatever uh in the same kind of system as a reward this is where I have to become a bit boring and crypto and Technical though like when you look at video game unit economics and you compare them to transaction fees to process things on these blockchains this is why it hasn't taken off on the other blockchains right like ethereum gas fees can Spike and then if you want to reward a user 2 cents it it doesn't work it

might cost you 20 bucks to do that the answer then is oh well there's layer TW okay so you go up to layer twos and you look at optimism and polygon and these other networks it's still about 10 to 15 cents a transaction sure it's a like 100x decrease on eth layer one but it doesn't work for video game economics and it's it's the fact that the lightning network isn't a blockchain that enables this um I would you know I would say that we're also a like lightening company that's that's our specialism you know adding adding more chains and more tokens doesn't differentiate us it it would actually bloat the organization and increase the security risks associated with managing that infrastructure um we do however you know keep a close eye on the whole ecosystem I'm very aware that this bull market seems to be punctuated by um let's call it alternative Bitcoin layer 2os uh you know I would say buyer beware on a lot of them um but we are looking at the ordinal market and what can be

done there and something I'm certain your your audience may not be aware of yet is the nosta protocol which is like a decentralized social media platform it includes the ability to uh give users badges so think like Xbox achievements we're looking at that very closely um but most of this stuff I have to say has very very small addressable user bases our mission is to go make main stream or be mainstream in terms of the audience we're trying to speak to it's keep it simple stupid as I said at the beginning you know yes once you step into the world of crypto you discover there's thousands of other currencies But ultimately that's that's not zeb's job you know zbd is here to give uses that first experience that demystifies Bitcoin a little bit teaches you it's not scary and doesn't make you buy it um it's it's a reward it's fun and you're supposed to enjoy the whole the whole ride if that makes sense definitely and I and I imagine like you know you mentioned that some of some of it's a

technical thing and some of it's a business thing and it'll be interesting to see if that evolves in the future is you know maybe just competitors look at where they could find a way to uh do something a little different than you're doing but also consider the rewarded space because that's really what we're talking about right is like the the sort of benefit of this but you mentioned something that I find kind of interesting which is you're talking about video game uh unit economics right and so obviously I I don't see like any way that your platform is necessarily limited to video games and I I've noticed a bit of a Resurgence in interest in gamification do you see potential here in usage of gamification like if I'm like hey I just passed one of these hard quizzes in Du lingo I can get a few SATs like is there potential there for outside of games or even actually the potential for within games but for say ugc type platforms like if Roblox was to say like hey roox is too too difficult to convert to Dollars where're just going to reward people out in Bitcoin uh stuff like that like just other applications besides you know what Paul's doing for do you want to join zeb's business development

team more the answer is yes uh we do we do do that um the most the best example I can give of that today is we power a podcasting app called Fountain um when you listen to podcasts on Fountain you send Bitcoin every minute to the podcaster directly and the podcaster keeps 99% of their earnings um also during the podcast as as you're listening if someone drops like a big knowledge bomb your mind blow gets blown or whatever and you want to say thank you there's a boost button and if you hit that you can send even more Bitcoin with a time stamp and a comment and that will show up in the fountain app for people to see it's a super cool like super Innovative product uh they've got you know 15,000 20,000 podcasters on them now and didn't expect to be Shilling uh fountain on this on this episode but it you know it is a great example of how the Bitcoin API we run is more versatile than just straight game

rewards um but other you know otherwise I'd stay tuned there there's some stuff it's just not right to talk about yet but we are looking you know broadly at payments in interactive mediums and in engagement they're actually kind of reminds me of the the steam Network that eventually kind of became like essentially turned into let's be honest uh splinterlands but it was kind of like that idea of like sort of this social I mean it still is a thing right like sometimes players in splits are trying to find ways to earn currency to spend in the game through blogging about the game and you up the C we circular thing but it does l us to the interesting idea of other outside applications where like encouraging user Behavior or engagement which is exactly what you're doing with the games but outside of those it be see to see now I'll definitely have to check out Fountain because it's you know an interesting idea obviously as we're on a podcast right now so definitely relevant so certainly not not not too off topic but uh I you know one of the things that I I think is kind of interesting is this sort of situation we've gotten into with with freeo play uh in general and also

there was that period where freeo play was kind of a new thing uh and you know it was kind of people figuring out took a while to catch on and there was this sort of a little bit of rejection from sort of core Gamers that never totally went away but it did become ubiquitous right free to play is everywhere you some games even have to go from being paid to just turning into free to play just to survive um so I guess here you know starting with you Ben but I definitely want PA a followup here for Paul uh do you see like this sort of thing becoming you know maybe encroaching on the space of like business models to acquire users because obviously we had to go to free to play because it was the only solution to you know race to the bottom past 99 Cents you couldn't get any lower you just had to go to free and if we're still going from free are we then going from free to actually paying people to play like the next step forward do you see this becoming I mean obviously you have a vested interested in that but do you see that being like a bigger Market or just kind of this cool thing that people could do right now it's a it's a good question I I think the my answer or my

thoughts on this would be it's a bit of both um I do see that money transfer payments buy like Call It by directional games have traditionally just been money in right and that's been fantastic for the games industry but increasingly with actually the rise of Creator driven social media there is an expectation of money out as well and you know if you look at platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram they they are really heavily positioning now towards paying creators and it's kind of like the natural extension of what YouTube did with the partner program games are in parallel also moving increasingly into community-driven growth and user generated content and that same demographic is coming into gaming and saying okay I've spent 10 hours doing this for you I don't want just like more soft currency like this was time time is money everyone's broke and society's falling apart like pay me um so you know

I I think that trend is going to continue and I also see um you know within the advertising World rewarded video is the most popular ad format in mobile game monetization when it comes to ads um it is fairly logical to take that reward one step further and make it monetary um so I I can see both of those Trends causing this sort of segment to continue to grow and become a meaningful percentage of uh let's call it the game monetization stack or the you know the game business model stack um but I don't think it swallows everything I I you know I think free to play was a very different proposition versus a $60 packaged product compared to say free to play with time Rewards or whatever it might be it's it's more like a subset um and I do think one just to finish on the point I I do think one thing the um web 3 ecosystem kind of mistimed was expecting to be able to essentially buy their way into the market and make it become a massive component of gaming and

then I'm not surprised that the games industry simultaneously threw up all over that it's you know these things need to need to come organically there needs to be player demand and uh and we're we're riding the growth of this demand and we're very pleased with it I think it has a a bright future and what about youup Paul um I think as an industry sometimes as spe talking about the games industry we quite often make sweeping statements like freeo play was was a huge like shift right it was it was uh like you said ubiquitous now but um I think there is uh there's definitely a growing demographic of player who are interested in getting something back like that's a no-brainer for me um and we see that as a as as consumers of games but we also see it as um you know that there's a there's a growth in platforms right now where you download their app and you play games through their product and you earn back uh a currency for playing that game another game or you know it's almost like this almost like economy building

there and we use some of those marketing channels for for our game and those are growing for sure so like it it seems to be uh a segment of our industry that is increasing and that that is exciting but I don't think it will like Ben said swallow everything there will always be players who prefer paid 60 bucks products because they're like I don't have to pay that and I'm done like there's different mindsets for these things so and I think that's cool I think that's okay personally so um yeah we're also riding the wave we've just done our biggest quarter ever like uh you know so there is there is definitely demand um how high it can go is what we're here to find out um like I said earlier in 10 years time I believe that it will be bigger than it's ever been um so yeah that's what we want Bitcoin minor to be around for I mean when you say like U Got higher and higher like I guess the question I have is is if this becomes really popular do you see an arms raced for payouts meaning like every every game advertised we pay out more than the other guy like the way casinos are like hey like we have the biggest payouts at our slots and you on

the Billboards and everything because obviously like you're competing for users and if there's other you know crypto minor games that are also offering this reward and you're suddenly having to be like but we give out the most stats this is the great thing about this in my mind is we like we won't compete on those things because those aren't the those are users those aren't players if they're just coming to get the biggest amount of financial gain like that that not a that's not a good user for us because we want people who you know who will play the game and engage with it and not just try and market and farm it as we said naturally they will come and I'm sure they'll go to our big the biggest payout games but like we're still a entertainment business we still make games primarily like all of my team know how to make games and they're great it in my opinion uh but we haven't got a clue about how to do all the infrastructure and stuff and like that's why we use Ze so we're sticking to what we're good at which is hopefully making really engaging games and the financial things are a side thing if it becomes the primary focus I

think we're just repeating the mistakes of 2001 2021 sorry um that's my personal opinion on it well cool like what one last quick question for you Ben just because I know like you're you're a little time limited is on obviously this is on paying out and not everyone has the means or the want to go to dollars out of this or whatever their their fiat currency is right uh is there potential or is the app s restrictions too much for the ability for these SATs or Satoshi or Bitcoin whatever you want to call them to come back into the game and like you know the the way like people will take their winnings so to speak and and spend them back and reinvest them is there any potential for that or is this a case of like it's just too complicated to involve cryptocurrency in purchases in games due to like Apple's policies and Google's policies yeah so the the we've always in there's nothing restricting our technology from allowing people to pay for stuff with Bitcoin in in games or you know in any in like a web store or something um there are we've done it on PC uh we actually

partnered with splitgate uh from 1047 games over Christmas and we ran a tournament where we gave away half a Bitcoin to the winners but the more exciting thing from our perspective was within Discord we allowed players to do PVP uh basically wagering with each other like okay Devin I think I can go one-on-one with you let's both pay in you know 5,000 SATs that's like a buck 50 or something and Winner Takes all and we saw a lot of of Engagement with that uh with during the the time with that tournament so we we've got you know proof points of showing that this is this is something that people will engage with and will do um that being said yes you've got to abide by Apple and Google's policies you know if you do start sticking pay with Bitcoin buttons in your game they're going to flag you and say no because you're not using Apple pay um I think though at the same time we're all aware of the dma the changing regulatory landscape the ability to sideload apps Etc uh we're investigating it but again through that lens of got to stay mainstream

we're looking for we're looking for normal users we're looking for Mass Market users they're more you know they if you look at where these upcoming changes in the environment are coming uh it's still very early doors you know we're I think you'll you'll almost certainly see a rush into doing app stores from many different platforms many different sources but at the same time you've got Microsoft epic Sony Etc all all likely to launch their own app stores so there's probably going to be like a Cambrian explosion of app stores and then some horrible like drought and everything and a lot will just disappear you know we're we're watching the space um I'm I'm more you know we talk about ourselves as being a payments company I don't want to give too much away here but you know we're more we're more interested in in being within Apple pay than trying to circumvent it I I suppose I guess in the meantime like uh you know people like Paul could just basically have a anothers virtual currency in the game that they could reward and then that be optionally cashed out to bitcoin

or just stay within the game and then be able to spend it that way as long as it never actually goes out to bitcoin it doesn't have to come back in as Bitcoin right so I suppose there's there's Alternatives there for for that sort of cash out thing but uh I do want to thank you guys both for joining I think it's been very enlightening and I know U you's been a lot of talk from from you guys lately and a lot of just thinking about this space in general um so I'm very interested to see where this goes just because it does seem like at least from a technological perspective you guys have found a good Niche that that seems to work pretty well and the numbers have have at least been beneficial for now right like I don't know uh if every game could get away with doing it but it definitely seems like it's worked out pretty well so I would like to see you know where it goes from here but I do want to thank you guys for joining and of course thanks everyone for listening uh just real quick uh where can they find more information start with you Ben uh whether to contact you directly like on LinkedIn or whatever or just to contact you through zbd uh where's the best place for people to find more information and your contact yeah link to is great I I I will confess to being a LinkedIn junkie um I'm on Twitter bit

spooky spooky like a ghost um and then zeb's website is at zbd Dogg and if you're a developer zbd dodev all right Paul your turn sure so I'm also on Twitter Paul West the L is a one because Paul West was taken uh and uh the best is probably LinkedIn so I'm I'm also a fiend on LinkedIn so uh yeah feel free to to message me there okay cool and also to be clear for anyone who's just listening doesn't anything spelled fum games is uh spelled f MB and not just Fu M or FM or something else uh just in case you're look looking for obviously you can look for Bitcoin miner and I it that way as well I assume but uh but definitely thanks for joining you guys and I hope everyone gets a chance to check all that stuff out play the games obviously free to play and you know potentially reward it so no reason not to give it a you know a shot right why not uh but thank you guys again and uh and hopefully catch you guys in the future as well and and thanks for joining and thanks to the listeners and we'll catch you next [Music] if you enjoyed today's episode whether

on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a fstar review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu or contact us to learn about our wide- ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]