Website: BreederDAO | $BREEDing life into the Metaverse, one game at a time.
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Website: BreederDAO | $BREEDing life into the Metaverse, one game at a time.
In this podcast episode, Greg Posner interviews Renz Chang, the visionary CEO of BreederDAO, a company focused on revolutionizing the Web3 gaming world. Renz shares his background in consulting and his journey into the blockchain ecosystem. He discusses how BreederDAO started as a project centered around providing assets to gaming guilds, but has now expanded to asset generation across various industries. The conversation delves into the concept of NFTs, asset creation, and the future of the metaverse. Renz emphasizes the importance of building an infrastructure that seamlessly integrates blockchain technology and AI to provide convenient and enjoyable experiences for users. The episode concludes with a discussion on community building and the need for education and adoption of blockchain technology. Overall, the conversation highlights the mission of BreederDAO to democratize asset creation and drive value into gaming economics.
Transcript
Intro: 00:00: 00:15: Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and Helpshift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
Greg Posner: 00:16: 00:49: Hey everybody, welcome to the Player Engaged podcast. Today we’re joined by Renz Chang, the visionary CEO of BreederDAO. With a background that spans entertainment, consultancy, and even a stint in driving loyalty, Renz has now turned his focus into revolutionizing the Web3 gaming world. passionate about making a genuine impact, he’s leading the charge and creating solutions that drive more value into gaming economics. So, Renz, thanks for joining me today. I love the topic of NFTs and what we’re going to do with it. I think that’s where this conversation is going to go today. Would you like to do a quick introduction of yourself as well as Breederdam?
Renz Chong: 00:49: 04:04: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Thanks, Greg, for the invite. Yeah, I mean, like myself, as you mentioned, background is actually consulting, did a bunch of like startups before finally, you know, So I think my background is kind of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of thing. pretty common with consultants, right? Where you try and go through every single industry across different industries, and then you end up like, you know, everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. So yeah, all of which are actually pretty helpful along the way. And I feel like it has made me into who I am today, plus how I was able to transition into GreeterDA. So I guess like a bit of a background for BreederDAO. We didn’t initially start it as BreederDAO. We didn’t like, you know, OK, we’ll start BreederDAO and then we’ll become the factory of the Metaverse, right? We actually started off by just regular ordinary players or participants in the blockchain ecosystem that encountered or that chance upon Oxy Infinity. Friends and I were actually playing, well my friends turned co-founders now, we’re actually just playing Axie Infinity, trying to get up to the leaderboards and then competing against each other, getting the best builds and then trying to recreate ones that we feel like would give us an advantage in the game. And then when we were actually going through that process and, you know, left and right, especially since we’re situated in the Philippines, we kind of saw an opportunity because there were a lot of people looking for, like, actually the idea of, like, the guild system and the scholarship model actually came here as Pioneer YGG. So it was actually very prevalent, I think, based off the record of, you know, a project who’s actually based out of the Philippines as well. There were over 25,000 guilds and a good majority is actually based out of the Philippines. So during that time, everyone was actually going with Axie Infinity and everyone wanted to be a scholar. When we actually encountered this kind of situation, we were like, you know what? If everyone’s just too focused on the user side of things, maybe there’s an opportunity to work on the supply side of things, right? because demand and supply works and it’s actually the basic premise of economics, right? So why not create a project that is centered around this thing, providing assets to all of these guilds such that they wouldn’t have to either create their own assets or buy off straight from the market because now you can not only do it cheaper because you can sell it in bulk, but they can also customize all of these assets. requests for specific builds. And so that’s ultimately how we started. We started selling with friends, friends turned into guilds, and then guilds eventually realized that it doesn’t just stop there. We can actually scale this business model outside of Axie Infinity, and we dabbled on all of these other games, and that’s eventually the current branding of FreediaDA, which is more like asset generation. It started off with gaming, but it’s now looking to expand to other facets or other industries as well.
Greg Posner: 04:05: 04:40: It’s a lot there. I appreciate that. I’d like to dig into different facets of what you’re talking about, right? So let’s start with kind of your background of a jack of all trades, master at none, which I think is an important quality to have as a founder or leader of a company, right? You want to be able to understand everything that’s happening around the company, but you also want to hire experts that come into each one of these facets. So you can trust someone with development, you can trust someone with finance, you can trust someone with all this stuff, right? So what was your actual background in consultancy? What were you doing prior to kind of starting a business?
Renz Chong: 04:40: 05:18: Sure. So I touched on the projects around sourcing. So, you know, if there’s like a particular supply chain, where is it best to source like particular materials? How can you actually reduce costs for the major cost drivers of a particular company? So it’s really heavy on like operations and even the stints that I did outside of my initial consulting work were mostly around driver operations, as you mentioned earlier. So it’s really heavy on execution and operational work. But I think prior to that one, I also dabbled in strategy. So it’s really primarily strategy and operations for the most part.
Greg Posner: 05:19: 05:39: So you kind of took a look at, you and your friends started playing Axie Infinity, kind of brand new NFT game that came out a couple of years ago. One of the first ones to really break into the market. And I believe it’s published by a company outside of the Philippines or in the Philippines, right? So you probably have one. It really blew up in that side of the world, right? Like that’s where a lot of the players are.
Renz Chong: 05:39: 05:41: Well, not in the Philippines, but like in Southeast Asia.
Greg Posner: 05:41: 06:24: Yeah, okay. So you then, I guess, kind of talk about your strategy background, right? You, you notice that, hey, something’s missing here, right? Like, they got something that’s working, but how do you make it scale properly? So you’re kind of looking to fix the problem of how do you scale? this. Axie Infinity kind of peaked off, right? It’s still being played, but I think that it kind of hit its ceiling for the current time. So now you’re looking at how do you leverage the asset creation across multiple, not just games, but also multiple verticals, right? Yep. Yep. So let’s kind of, for people that are listening that can’t quite wrap their heads around NFTs, and I’ll admit that I’m probably one of them as well, right? You’re talking about asset creation, right? Each asset is its own NFT. Is that
Renz Chong: 06:24: 07:38: Well, it can and can be. Most of the digital assets, especially pre-blockchain and pre-AXIE Infinity, were mostly non-NFTs. These weren’t tokens, they aren’t tradable, they aren’t usable outside of their own individual digital space. In fact, the developers could just choose to shut it down and then you have no control over it. The idea basically is that these are digital characters that you may own just because it’s tied to your account, but it doesn’t actually live outside of whatever the developer wants. And so when NFTs were created, it’s like, okay, apparently we can give birth or we can actually exist outside of what the developer actually creates. Because now we live on other chains or we live outside of that sphere. We live on chain, right? And if I choose to adapt that particular asset and bring it to my game, which makes it like off chain or could be on chain still, right? It’s not solely limited to that. And so because of that, then it has the life outside of that particular space. It has a life of outside of that ecosystem. It has a life outside of, you know, what the developer wants, because it exists in a space outside of that.
Greg Posner: 07:38: 08:07: I’m going to ask a silly question. And just to kind of wrap my head. No silly questions. Like, let’s put it in terms of AAA games, right? Because I can name those a lot easier, right? Is the idea of being able to create something in Call of Duty whether it be a skin or a weapon skin or something. And then eventually, if Fortnite were to accept the same sort of asset, being able to take my asset from Call of Duty to Fortnite, is that kind of what the end goal is that you own that asset, and you can bring it from place to place? Or is it different?
Renz Chong: 08:07: 09:59: I mean, eventually, but that’s not the entire reason, right? Like, you don’t necessarily need to prove interoperability whereby you take an asset from one particular space to another. just to be able to prove that it’s actually something or an NFT or something that you own. I guess the most common example that I usually tell people is that if you own that couch behind you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that if you don’t bring it to someone else’s house that you don’t necessarily own it or that it’s not like an NFT for example because it’s still yours. And you can do so many things about it. you know, transform it into, or you can change the color, for example, from the beige to yellow or something, right? And so the flexibility of being able to do something with that digital asset outside of the realm or outside of the direction of the original creator of that particular chair is what makes it yours, right? It’s not about like, you know, being able to transfer it, being able to bring it to a different world. It’s about being able to use it in some cases than what it was originally intended for. And I mean, that’s the beauty of NFTs in general. And while there are some hiccups or some roadblocks at the moment, the eventual goal is that whatever it is, if you want it, then you should be able to do something about it, whether that’s just changing the color, whether that’s, you know, being able to sell an IP out of it or bringing it to a different game, then, you know, the fact that you’re able to do something about it that’s based off your discretion and your own whim, right, then that’s, you know, the core vision of what we’re trying to do here.
Greg Posner: 09:59: 10:07: So you mentioned earlier on that you’re looking to kind of expand beyond gaming into other verticals as well. What does this look like in the world of another vertical?
Renz Chong: 10:07: 12:34: I’m going to take a step back here and talk about the idea of a metaverse, where metaverse is not solely limited to gaming. We’ve seen applications, especially or primarily in the fashion world, where people would just dress up and sometimes they do their shopping online and all of that. Or for some people, it’s not just about dressing up or being able to play. It’s about being able to connect with people. So there’s a social aspect to it. I think it’s about being able to provide for anyone who would want to enter the digital space. So going virtual is actually inevitable. What we’ve been seeing is that people, as time goes by, actually goes back or goes more into digital. We’ve seen that happen with the rise of social media. We’ve seen that with with COVID and then people going to Google means Zoom versus like going face to face to do their jobs. And eventually, you know, as more and more of these experiences become more and more immersive, then people would naturally just gravitate towards what’s convenient, what’s easy, what’s more efficient, right? And nothing can provide that better more than digital. Not to say that, you know, the physical experiences are but a nuance or something that would cease to exist, right? But We actually believe that eventually, if there are things that can be done virtually and it’s more efficient, or for some people, especially since not everyone can just teleport from one place to another, or not everyone has the capability to fly from one place to another, these digital experiences are made to also allow people to experience the things that they cannot, because it might be expensive, it might be unreachable, it might be like out of reach, right? So the more that we actually allow people to experience these things, and because digital, one of the most common themes of digital is actually reducing the cost of having these experiences, right? Because it’s not scarce, it’s not one-of-one, it’s not, or it doesn’t compete with any of the current resources that are depleting around us right now. And therefore, there’s an opportunity for us to be able to share it with everyone and for everyone to have a share of the pie.
Greg Posner: 12:34: 13:16: So you’re talking kind of in the world of the metaverse where we’re all interacting digitally, right? The idea of owning a piece of clothing and owning is something that’s yours, right? That you can do, you can manipulate. It’s yours to own and do with what you want in the digital world or the metaverse. Right. In a way. So I guess, you know, from Axie Infinity to the metaverse, right? How, how do you recognize the point that, Hey, there’s a way to unify these guilds or make these guilds a little more, a little more, I don’t want to say the word productive, right? But like, how do you make them scale? Like what, what made you, what was that light bulb moment for you where you and your friends recognize that?
Renz Chong: 13:16: 15:56: I think it’s more of like a natural thing. When we were looking at the Axie model, we realized that it cannot sustain that level of traction forever. And I think the team, and also everyone else who was part of it, kind of acknowledged that. That you can’t just suddenly quit your job and just live off a game, a singular game, perpetually forever. I mean, yes, but imagine being able to replicate it easily across every single human being on earth. Where is that money even coming from? It’s not that we actually had like a light bulb moment, it’s more of like it’s a fact, right? And everyone knew that, right? It was just dependent on how fast are you able to shift or how fast are you able to plan what’s next and be able to deliver what’s next, right? So I think we were just ahead in terms of taking an action or taking a move, and then trying to be advanced in terms of, okay, this is clearly not going to be the future, right? And the metaphors is not just about being able to earn money so that you can have a better life here in the physical world, right? It’s about all of these experiences that we’re able to replicate or that we’re able to do outside of the physical realm. It’s about these things that we’re able to share with other people that might be different from physical just because we can sometimes do it more frequently or just because we can do it even without going through the hassle of actually flying over to a particular place and doing it together face-to-face. Yeah, I think it’s not about us having that lightbulb moment, but it’s about us staying ahead. And it really depends on how you see it. Is your idea of a metaverse similar to, for example, Ready Player One? Because for some people, it might be what already exists via social media, being able to connect with people, because that’s the only ask that they have. It’s not like they are clamoring for more immersive experiences. And eventually, if it comes, then it comes. It’s about having different perspectives on what an actual metaverse is. How immersive do you really want to go with these experiences? And how deep in terms of virtual reality or augmented reality do you want to go with these experiences?
Greg Posner: 15:57: 17:14: I think that’s really well said, right? It’s something I think we’re still learning as a people, right? Is what is this metaverse? What is this concept, right? Ready Player One was like a dream. And then all of a sudden we started seeing different ways of it coming out. Is it what Facebook’s doing with no legs? Is it what Apple’s doing with a mix of AR? Quest is far ahead, I think, with certain things, right? It’s an interesting question of where is it going to go? And I think that plays a big role in this. And a number of the people I’ve podcasted also talk about the idea of like, how do I put this into words? It’s like, you don’t, if you’re talking about it, still, it’s going to be harder for it to take off. Like when Call of Duty releases an update, they don’t talk about their SQL table and the tools that they’re using on back end. Like if NFTs and metaverse kind of just blend into the actual game, and you’re playing the game, not realizing you’re trading NFTs, or you’re doing something like that. That’s how you know, it’s all becoming more coercive into your world. That’s how you’re starting to live with it. The fact that we’re still sitting here talking about, hey, NFTs, NFTs, NFTs, I think that’s going to scare a certain population away. But when it’s just built into the game, a natural mechanic that you do, I think it becomes more accepted. And I think that’s kind of where, and maybe I’m not right, but the kind of the idea of with BreederDAO is where you’re creating these assets over and over again, you’re not talking about NFTs, you’re creating these assets that you can reuse, and you can kind of recycle from there.
Renz Chong: 17:14: 20:06: No, that is true. I think most of us were actually born into an era of internet, But for the most part, especially our parents or grandparents, that was actually not on the table when they were young. So it was actually quite a stretch when they suddenly realized that, okay, this is not something that I was born into. For us, we actually just take it for granted. We were actually born into it. We were like, okay, internet is so fun and it’s a thing that already exists. But for them, it was a different experience. And I guess right now we’re experiencing what our parents did with the internet, We’re trying hard to actually create that infrastructure so that the future generations won’t have to talk about wallets, NFTs. It’s not even about that. It’s about being born into it and it being part of the community that exists. There’s no going through the hassle of trying to track Etherscan for where my transaction is or how did it actually go, or trying to force-fit utility onto most of these assets because it just comes naturally. Yeah. And what you said about us trying to actually do the same route, right? We don’t want people to be always recreating the wheels or the technology just to be able to come up with assets. The future goal is that the only limitation when it comes to what you want to have within the Metaverse would be your imagination because with the advancement of AI, with stuff like, I guess, all of these developments in technology, it’s pretty easy for people to actually create the same kind of content or information that has previously been done. So how do I actually create something that’s purely mine? It’s actually up to me to reimagine it without having to go through the technicalities of how to create it, without having to have the discipline, the know-how, the technological knowledge to create it, I should still be able to create it. Because admittedly, people don’t care. As long as they’re able to see the results, then they don’t care how you actually do it. As long as it’s easy, it’s convenient, then I’ll accept it. I think that’s one of the main issues or blockers of blockchain right now. It’s because we’re trying to make people understand that technology that they should want versus them realizing that it’s what they want. So I think we still have ways ahead in terms of trying to make people understand that. But it shouldn’t be us force-fitting it or forcing them to actually understand it and just suck it up and study it because it’s going to be the next big thing. They have to find that out for themselves.
Greg Posner: 20:08: 20:49: I took some notes here and I apologize, but there’s some things I want to kind of poke into, right? And I think at the heart of this, I’m going to probably ask you at a high level to explain exactly what BreederDAO is doing, right? What’s it enabling? But my first question I have is, you know, you mentioned AI and AI’s clearly boomed, I think, even since before we started talking, since then it’s become even more crazy. But my question is, does that pose a risk at the concept of asset creation? Because I can now go to like a a mid-journey or something else and type something in? Or is that going to actually enable you to do things quicker because you have the base image and you can just use AI to help come up with concepts of how to kind of alter that?
Renz Chong: 20:49: 23:57: Well, it actually goes both ways. I think what’s unique about like the combination of blockchain and AI is that eventually everyone’s going to create the same kind of content via AI. And there’s no way to prove its originality, right? But if you actually include the concept of blockchain, and blockchain is known for its provenance, right? You’re able to track like whether that particular creation is original or it’s an offshoot of like something else. So, well, that’s the first one. And, you know, we’re tackling both AI and blockchain like in The most recent product that we released is called AI Skins, which leverages already existing technology to be able to create these assets, but at the same time allows you to properly store it as an original version, and it’s verifiable on-chain. So that adds another element to it. On a second note, for sure, people are going to be able to create all of these assets themselves, It’s not just about the creation, it’s also about the distribution. What we want to happen here is that people shouldn’t have to create assets and then have nowhere to use them, right? We also want to be the bridge, right? Dealing with, I guess, games, dealing with partners, dealing with all of these metaverses that they might be able to use their assets in or for, right? Because admittedly, even though it’s a decentralized ecosystem, there are still gatekeeping that’s happening. from a business perspective, there are costs that are associated when it comes to adding more content into your platform. There are bandwidths that you have to manage so that your servers do not go overload just because there’s a limited capacity at the moment. So there are a lot of things still that even if you have access to AI, you’ll still need projects like ours to help navigate and to make it easy for you. And I think, like, even though we’re saying that AI has reached a point where everyone can really use it, I mean, just like with technology, right? Even though there’s already online banking, there’s already, like, pseudo-banking or, like, financial services out there, some people still prefer cash just because it’s not yet easy for them. I think it’s still going to take a while, even though as popular as AI is, it’s still going to take a while before people really understand technology and use it on a regular basis. And you will need companies or projects to be able to help you drive them from here to there. And we aim to be one of those projects out there. Asset creation can be done via AI. but not everyone can do it properly. So us being the intermediary, the middle guys to actually help facilitate that process in the interim, and then eventually maybe completely shifting to a specialized asset creation kind of thing, which would also be a possibility, right? But for now, the way we’re thinking about it is that We don’t want to recreate the wheel. We don’t want to create our own thing. We want to use the technology at hand and help bridge that to people.
Greg Posner: 23:57: 24:55: Yeah. Distribution is really a great point, right? I mean, that’s the one thing that we really can’t get help with from AI at the moment, right? Creation to a degree, right? It’s going to be messy and whatever. It’s possible, but not great. But distribution is an interesting one because it’s going to, if I’m a Web3 developer today starting to create a game, right? How do I hook into the BreederDown network? Is it an SDK? Is there like, Yeah, it’s funny. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Gardner hype cycle, right? It’s this kind of concept of, hey, when a new technology comes out, the first thing that happens is everyone gets so excited that they start building every little thing under the world. Like, hey, here’s chat GPT that can write a book. Here’s chat GPT that can write a song, right? Whatever. And then people start doing crazy stuff. And then the hype dies down and then real products start to come of it, right? It seems like you’re thinking further down the line, right? Like, let’s not buy into the hype of NFT. Let’s not buy into the hype of AI. Let’s create a network that can distribute these assets across Right. So how do I, as a developer, buy into this network of distribution? How does that work?
Renz Chong: 24:55: 26:33: For sure. So we’re actually working on that on two sides. The first one is like hooking them up first to partners that we already have. So the platform, for example, that I mentioned earlier, which helps with the distribution part, already allows you to convert these assets into different file formats, which is the first step in order to be able to transform from one particular asset, from one particular world to another, right? If it’s a voxel type, for example, you would need a .vox format, right? And so the conversion process happens in our world. So the way we actually do it would be two ways. The first one is that what assets do you want to bring into the table, right? And we don’t have an SDK or an API plugin yet. That’s actually one of the things that we feel like we should be working on next. But it really depends on how mature the market becomes. And then the second part would be bridging those back into the game. Because a lot of these games are still in a closed loop. And as I mentioned earlier, from a business perspective, you still have to manage costs, you still have to manage server load. So they are not as open to accept every single thing that people would want to bring in. We still need to improve the technology that we have. We still need to be able to scale properly before we’re able to do that. But we’re working on the groundwork. Who are the partners that people would want to distribute to? What are the kinds of assets that they want to create? These are the things that we’re trying to still work on at the moment. But as you mentioned, we’re thinking ahead, we’re thinking down the line, right? Because eventually, we don’t want to just go with the hype. We want to be here for the long run and we want to remain relevant across different types of goals.
Greg Posner: 26:34: 27:09: Cool. So I want to take a quick time out here because I usually like to do in the middle of this podcast is kind of some rapid fire questions. Things that take really no brain power and just kind of see where you’re at. So it should probably take a minute or so. So you good to go? Yeah. All right. What’s the last game you played? Mobile Legends. Mobile Legends. What did you have for breakfast? Whey protein. All right, with milk, just by itself? Just by itself. All right. What is the last book you read?
Renz Chong: 27:09: 27:15: What is the last book I read? I don’t even remember. Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.
Greg Posner: 27:15: 27:25: I was going to say, it would take me a minute to think about that, too, because I am not a huge reader. But last question, yeah. What is your ideal vacation?
Renz Chong: 27:25: 27:31: That’s hard. I mean, vacation for me is also work, so that’s hard.
Greg Posner: 27:33: 28:00: Keeping busy. One of the things that you kind of spoke about, not much into detail, and something that’s important for, I imagine a tool like this is this sense of community and being able to build up people that want to be a part of it, people that want to help. And I know you guys do stuff with community. How do you build a community or how are you working on the community? Is it something that’s top of mind or is it just happening by the wayside? What’s your strategy there?
Renz Chong: 28:01: 32:11: Sure. So I guess the initial community that we built was quite obvious. As I’ve mentioned, we were focused on the creation side of assets for Axie Infinity specifically. So most of the guys that we were able to attract were either guys who’d want to learn how to create, craft, or generate these assets, or people who would want to purchase these specialized assets that we created. So that’s the kind of community that we initially built. And it’s from the ethos of like what we did as A2B or, you know, what we actually strive for as like a project. And at the same time, you know, I feel like that’s the most effective way of building a community. Like understanding what is your goal, what is your vision, and then sharing that with people who are, you know, like-minded, right? Who wants to actually participate in building that kind of like vision together with you guys. Admittedly though, a lot of these guys, because of the bear market, kind of disappeared or, you know, got disinterested, which makes you think, are they just in it for the money? Did they initially share the same vision, right? Which is okay, right? I mean, each one has like different perspective and different motivations, right? What we’re slowly realizing is that you’d want to know like what the motivation that you want to actually provide your community. Is it earnings? Is it, you know, if they buy into your token then their expected returns? Is it just a core component of just being able to create assets or creating the best assets out there? just basically what you’re doing, which is decentralizing asset creation and then allowing everyone to participate without having the technical background to do so. And for us right now, we’re still trying to figure that out. Most of the projects that we’ve seen who’ve had successful NFTs have a cult-like following. but it’s mostly driven by gains or profits. And therefore, we continually ask ourselves, is that the kind of community that we want to have? Or have we not tapped or have we not reached the community that we want to eventually bring in? Because even though we say that Web3 has already encouraged a lot of people to participate, I mean, most of the people around me still don’t understand what a blockchain even means. Or what blockchain even is, right? Or what cryptocurrency even is, right? We can still generalize the kind of people who are actually here right now. And it’s still a limited pool. So maybe, you know, the first few ones are really just motivated by profits, right? And there’s nothing wrong about that. But again, is that the kind of people that we want to bring in? If so, then I mean the clear motivation there is money, right? Either you actually share them with whatever profits you guys can generate as a project so that they stay as your community and they become loyal people or members of your group. or just wait for the next wave to come on board. And then maybe you’ll find a solid community who would appreciate the tools that you have and then eventually stay loyal to you. So yeah, we’re hoping for the latter one because we’re building out the infrastructure right now to be able to accommodate these individuals. And as I mentioned, we want to democratize asset creation and being able to help people craft their own assets being able to provide them with the tools that they would need to be able to imagine whatever it is that they want or to visualize whatever it is that they want. And it might not be as appreciated right now because it’s not earning people as much money. But eventually, it’s not going to be about earnings. It’s not going to be about whether this particular thing or project can give me like a 10x or 100x. It’s just about me genuinely enjoying using this product or me genuinely enjoying the idea or that thing that actually makes this part of this product.
Greg Posner: 32:11: 33:18: That’s a fascinating way to kind of approach the situation because me, and I’ll just tell you my thoughts, right? Seeing NFTs come out a couple of years ago with this board apes, I think it was, or something with apes, right? And seeing how much money they were going for, it’s just kind of thinking to myself, like, How could anyone normal be affording this type of stuff? And yeah, it’s in the beginning. It’s like the gold rush. Everyone wants to go make a dollar on something. But the thing is, if there’s no one there building out a platform that can help it scale, that can help it survive, right? It’s right. I don’t want to say it’s boring, because it’s not boring, but you’re not here to make a quick buck, you’re here to help rebuild an infrastructure, build this thing to work, and you need to have enough people helping with that to do that. And the question is, like, is that happening, right? Are more games being built, including this stuff, right? You probably have a little more visibility into that than I do. I know a lot of our customers are still investing in Web3. So that stuff does happen, right? Are there gonna be enough people that are willing to kind of put their head down and just work to it to build a platform rather than just quickly make that quick buck?
Renz Chong: 33:18: 36:26: Yeah, definitely, right. And I don’t think, like, the ape idea is entirely something that we should not follow, right? Because, like, there’s a niche that exists out there that would still want to go for that one. exactly why exclusive clubs, even in the current world that we live in, still exist. Because there’s a natural market fit for that kind of people. Yes, it’s not to the point where you can scale it to everyone, but there are still people who would appreciate the exclusivity and the high floor or barrier to entry for these kind of things. That’s fine. But as you mentioned, right, if we want to go down to the masses, if we want to build out the infrastructure so that a lot more people can enter, then we should be thinking about it differently. And so, yes, I’ve been seeing a lot of projects actually that are building for that future because they realize only a handful can actually become board apes, right? You can’t expect a lot of people to all have like a floor of what, like 25 at the moment or even 100 before, right? That’s not like the path for every single project, and there’s a lot of projects. And I think with gaming specifically, at the start, what you said was actually right, where it was mostly hype, right? People saw Axie Infinity’s success, they created different copies of Axie Infinity, basically just changed the characters, but half the same except mechanics, right? But you know, I mean, I’m personally pretty hype about some of the games that are about to launch. I’ve attended 3XP. I’ve attended a lot of these other game conferences that showcase a lot of other games that have been using blockchain technology. to improve players’ experiences. And even more established gaming studios have already started integrating the idea of blockchain into their own specific IPs or even games. So there’s definitely a lot more genre that we’re going to see in the next few quarters. And for me, it’s similar to how free-to-play started, right? At the start, people didn’t know how to exactly monetize free-to-play until ads came along, right? And so the quality of the initial run of these free-to-play versus most of the pay-to-play kind of games, right? I’m saying that we’re experiencing the same phenomenon because right now free-to-play games can actually level with pay-to-play kind of games, right? And blockchain gaming or blockchain games may be experiencing the same situation as like free-to-play in the early days. But eventually, you know, maybe blockchain games can rival even that of like free-to-play. And then who’s to say that it’s actually a separate field in terms of gaming or even a new kind of game. It’s just going to be a game that people generally enjoy. Whether it’s blockchain or not, it doesn’t matter because it’s a game that’s fun and enjoyable to play with.
Greg Posner: 36:26: 36:55: I think that’s the stigma we want to get rid of, right? Where we don’t have to say blockchain game, it’s just a game, right? And maybe the framework is built in and maybe all that stuff is, right? At the end of the day, it’s still just a game and it’s interesting to compare it to free to play because you’re right, right? It’s a new style game that people are going to free to play. It could still be any type of game, right? But it’s just the concept of it being free and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes. Is there anything you know on the horizon, the technology side of things from NFT or blockchain that excites you in general?
Renz Chong: 36:55: 39:34: There are a lot more on the standards. 6551, for example, which is able to host a lot of NFTs under it. So it becomes like an NFT on NFTs. I feel like with that kind of implementation, there’s a lot of executions down the road that can be utilized. For example, in our case, the idea of abstracting interoperability. If you look at most of the current assets right now, they follow a particular standard, especially when you want to bring them to a game. But it’s not like you originally create a standard that people will judge it out, right? So you can expect that each individual creator, each individual developer will have their own standards, right? But for you to abstract that under a singular NFT, a 6551 solution might be one of the best ways to go about it, right? Because it actually hosts all of these different formats, or even NFTs, right? Under one particular NFT. And every time it interacts with a particular game, then it obtains like information from one of the subsets from that particular NFT. The 43371 standard is also interesting because, you know, people don’t, admittedly, people don’t want to do like wallets, right? Like, why do I want to memorize my seed phrase when I have my email, right? So account abstraction is also something that we’re heavily looking at. So basically, Most of the technology that I’m really excited about are about providing that convenience and experience to the users that is not alienating and that is not hard to actually understand. So yeah, there’s a lot more, some of which I also can’t share. But I think in terms of gaming, AI applications to gaming are going to be pretty interesting. One of the biggest thing for me is the generation of content. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’ve played a lot of games, right? And the worst thing that could happen is for you to reach endgame and then for you to not do anything or for free to play, right? For you to finish out content and then what’s next? It’s about the grinding and then the next content becomes so easy because you’ve already maxed out all your characters, right? With AI, we’re able to replicate content super fast and we’re able to create different experiences in more ways than one, at a faster rate, at a more efficient speed. So yeah, that fast content generation is just one of the things that can help us when it comes to how we can push forward the idea of gaming.
Greg Posner: 39:34: 40:46: Yeah, just fast content. an abundance of content doesn’t always mean good content, right? I remember when I was little, and I got access to tons of video games, and all of a sudden, you play each game for like five minutes, and it’s just like, all right, well, I just played 100 games. And right, so it’s making sure that there’s quality along with the quantity so that making sure that it’s a good experience, not overwhelming. For sure. What you were talking about, it sounds like for the upgrades that are exciting, you’re a lot of quality of life upgrades for the user who’s using the asset, who’s buying an asset, right? And I think that’s important. And I think we spoke with someone a while ago who built a game called AI Arena. And what I thought was interesting about that is that they’re building an AI that learns how to fighters fight in a fighting game, right? That itself can almost be like an NFT itself, right? Like, hey, here’s my fighter profile. My punch speed is X, my kick speed is X. I was thinking, hey, there’s probably other ways to look at these NFT thing. Like what is an NFT? What is, is it an asset? Is it a profile? Is it something else? It could really be anything, right? At the end of the day, it’s like, it’s just kind of your rights to something in this realm.
Renz Chong: 40:46: 42:15: Yep. Well, it’s basically unique ownership of like, something. It’s essentially a token that’s non-fungible. And so I think it being a token could already account or could already say that it could be anything. But the non-fungibility part is what’s important. How do I make sure that it’s something that’s mine, right? And it’s something that not just anyone can actually replicate. Also, same with the idea of class A’s, class B’s, fakes, and all of that, right? Like, what exactly is real versus fake, right? Because even though, and as you said, right, if AI arena can actually learn, then my avatar can actually learn the same things that your avatar can do. But what’s to say that that avatar is yours, that’s an avatar, right? you know, merges and all of that, right? Like, how do I differentiate it afterwards, right? And so, that’s why I’ve been saying that, you know, blockchain actually plays a crucial role in the development of AI, because no technology can actually, I guess, compete against the speed of AI, aside from blockchain, at least from my perspective, right? And so, you know, being able to trap all of these things, because I don’t think blockchain is just a ledger, right? It’s able to store all of this information. And so, if I can store this kind of information, that it doesn’t matter whether that information becomes or richest with like another information, because I still know which ones, which ones.
Greg Posner: 42:15: 43:10: I think there’s this whole, I feel like my parents saying this, right, but this whole education aspect that still needs to be understood on what is blockchain, what is NFTs, what is right, like, to me, I get probably 80% of it, but then there’s this missing gap here. But I think, you know, the either the audience needs to either understand what they’re doing or just has to blend in with the game like we’ve been talking about like You talked about it with our parents trying to learn the internet with years of no internet. And I feel like this is kind of where we are now is this is new technology that we talked about. And to your point you made earlier, like there is some learnings that need to go on. It’s not about creating an ape and selling an ape for thousands of dollars. It’s about creating an asset or something that you can, that you can own and make it yourself. And I think, I think that’s going to be an interesting to see how that happens over the next couple of years of either blending in or educating the public on what’s actually happening.
Renz Chong: 43:10: 44:03: I mean, it’s our responsibility to build out the infrastructure to be able to support that, right? Just like the earlier believers of Internet created a world where people just have it as a world that they’re born into, right? Eventually, we’re going to do the same for the people. that are not part of blockchain or the future generations that aren’t even born yet, right? We should build this technology out properly so that eventually people don’t even need to understand what NFT is. Just that, for example, ISP is not something that we actually had to go through when we started using the internet, right? We just had the Google Chrome, right? So yeah, it’s the same case, right? There’s no concept of wallets. There’s no concept of that. Everything that I have in me is mine and I can prove it because it’s in my wallet.
Greg Posner: 44:03: 44:12: With BreederDAO, does it have to be a Unity game that I’m creating? Is it built on the Unity framework like assets or can it be anything?
Renz Chong: 44:13: 45:48: Oh no, so it could be anything. That’s one of the reasons why I’m pretty stoked about the 6551 because it just allows for anything to be part of it, right? And I’m not saying that we’ve already mapped things out that we’re sure that we can accommodate all of these things, but it’s a step, right? The first thing that you have to do is be able to understand what kind of format or what kind of, I guess, format Do these games accept in the first place? And are you able to actually build that as part of this asset or this original asset that will become the copy of the original user? And ultimately, that’s the only thing that matters. Am I able to integrate this? Is there a modular component to the asset that I’ve created that it can actually communicate to a Unity game, to Unreal Engine game? And that’s what we’re building, right? We’re building these endpoints so that eventually whatever you guys create, it can actually communicate with the original asset that I still have, right? Of course, I think it’s not like a one is the one where automatically I can already bridge this with like a new technology. There’s a lot of like things that goes around the back end, but at least like The important part is like having that back end and allow these to have like, how do I say this, like an end point where they can talk, communicate so that that becomes like the starting point in which or with which they can proceed with integration.
Greg Posner: 45:49: 46:18: Yeah, so you basically house the asset in a specific format. And if it’s an Unreal game you’re using or a Unity game or some Godot game, right, it can make the transformation or maybe you have the tools as just an endpoint to help kind of manipulate the asset to get it working in that engine. For sure. Yeah. Cool. Renz, I think that’s all the questions I have for you today. I appreciate you coming on and educating me as well as our audience on both BeaterDAO, NFTs, blockchain. Is there anything you want to talk about from BeaterDAO that you want to plug?
Renz Chong: 46:19: 47:14: Yeah, I think I mostly centered the conversation around distribution and creation and file formats and whatnot, right? But I think at the end of the day, what people should understand about BreederDAO is that we’re focused on assets, whether that’s assets that’s created in-game via breeding, crafting, all of that, whether that’s about converting static NFTs to dynamic NFTs and then bringing in a new wave of ads within these games, or whether that’s about converting file formats from one game that’s allowable to another. Eventually, what we want to have a hand in is that everything or every singular asset is either created by us, was inspired by our products, or was generated through some influence via us. And that’s what ultimately who we are and what we strive to be as a company as a whole.
Greg Posner: 47:15: 47:59: Cool, I appreciate that. And you should check out the BreederDAO website. It’s breederdao.io. We’ll have links to it on the PlayerEngaged website and we’ll also share it in social media. I love what you do. I’m always a fan of companies that put a roadmap on their website. I feel like it’s a risky thing, but it’s cool to be able to see what you’re doing and you can almost take a look at it over time and see what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve hit, what we haven’t hit. It’s just really great stuff. And it’s cool stuff. I’m excited to continue my learnings on both BreederDAO, NFT community, what’s happening there. I’d love to see how it continues to evolve. I think you guys are building something that can scale really greatly. And I’m excited to see what happens. And again, I do appreciate you coming on today. And if anyone is looking for Renz and BreederDAO, we’ll have that information. And thank you again for coming today.
Renz Chong: 47:59: 48:09: Awesome, Greg. You and me both, like the world of blockchain is constantly changing. So yeah, it’s a learning process even for me. So yeah, pretty excited for the future.
Greg Posner: 48:09: 48:31: And just, sorry, to finish it, right? It’s a learning process. It’s also, I know we’re extending this here, but like that trust, right? Again, when it starts with bored apes that are going for $10,000, it’s just like, who can do that, right? It’s about making sure that it’s a sustainable, scalable, something that everyone wants to use, right? Not just a quick cash grab. And I think building out tools like this are just going to help the community.
Renz Chong: 48:31: 48:34: For sure. Yeah. That’s the goal.
Greg Posner: 48:34: 48:38: Yeah. Right. So thank you again. We’ll share all the information and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
