Growing a Business With Web3: The Web3 Academy Story

Speaker A: Hey, it's Mike Stelzner. What if you had an AI system that wrote your ad copy, generated the images and video, reviewed its own work and made revisions, all customized to your brand without you ever touching it? That's exactly what Caleb Cruise is teaching AI Business Society members to build on July 16th. No coding required. Join today at ah, socialmediaexaminer.com AI and if you're listening to this in the future and you missed it, the full recording and resource kit are waiting for you. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Web3Business podcast, helping you navigate the future of business. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.

Speaker C: Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Web3Business podcast brought to you

Speaker A: by Social Media Examiner.

Speaker C: I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for innovative thinkers who

Speaker A: want to know what works in the world of Web3.

Speaker C: Today, I'm going to be joined by Kyle Reed, head, and we're going to explore growing a business in Web3, specifically how Web3 Academy is growing their business and all the fascinating tools they're using to be able to pull off all the great things that they're doing. By the way, I'm at Mike Underscore Stelzner on Twitter, slash X. If you want to reach out to me, that's the way to reach me.

Speaker A: You know what most marketers are doing manually? Ad creative, writing the copy, coordinating with the designer for the images, waiting on video edits, managing revisions every campaign, every cycle. I wanted to fix that for our members. So on July 16th, I'm bringing Caleb Cruise to teach inside the AI Business Society. He's going to show members how to build personalized AI pipelines using Claude code that runs the entire creative process on its own. Copy, images, video, revisions, all customized to your brand. And you don't need to be a

Speaker C: coder to do it.

Speaker A: I'll be in the room for the entire session. I'm in every session. And I can tell you members are going to walk away with a clear, buildable system that they can put to work that very same week.

Speaker C: If you can't make it live, the

Speaker A: full recording and resource kit will be waiting for you. Transcripts, slides, key takeaways, the whole shebang. This is what we do every month inside the AI Business Society. Come and see for yourself. And don't miss this training. Join@SocialMediaExaminer.com AI again. SocialMediaExaminer.com AI

Speaker C: transition over to this week's interview with Kyle Readhead.

Speaker B: Helping you to simplify your web3 journey. Here is this week's expert guide.

Speaker C: Today I'm very excited to be joined by Kyle Readhead. If you don't know who Kyle is, you gotta know who he is. He is the co founder of Impact3, a growth marketing agency that works with the largest newsletters in fintech and crypto. He's also the co founder of Web3Academy, a media platform that helps businesses and creators understand how to use Web3. And you co host the Web3 Academy podcast. Kyle, welcome back to the show. How you doing today, man?

Speaker D: I'm good, Michael, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here again. I forget how long ago it was that I was on here. I think it was a while ago

Speaker C: now though, but it was almost a year ago, so. Welcome back, man.

Speaker D: Wow. A lot has changed.

Speaker C: A lot has changed. Today Kyle and I are going to explore what it takes to grow a business in this crazy world that we call Web3. What I would love to ask you, Kyle, is, you know, you run this media company. I'm going to call it a media company. Right, Media entity, media platform, whatever you want to call it, call Web3 Academy. And I would love you to share the journey over the last year because you were last on the show in November, I think of last year, which is right when the Sam Bankman fried fiasco was starting, I think, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker A: So the world has changed a lot.

Speaker C: Like share a little bit from your perspective what the journey's been like for you as the founder of a business in this space that we're in right now.

Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So we launched Web3 Academy in February of 2022. We actually launched it on the day that Russia invaded the Ukraine. So terrible day to launch. So never launch when a war is starting, that's for sure. But also at the same time, that's kind of the beginning. I mean, the bear market of crypto started back in, let's say November was the top, but no one really knew it was the bear market yet. Same with February, but basically since then it's just been kind of down. Only in terms of pricing. Like you said, FTX collapse, you had all the stuff with three hours capital in the summer. So it's been, um, let's say a lot of bad news, especially as a media company where we report news. So that's been unexpected. We didn't really realize that was going to happen. The interesting thing about this space is I didn't realize how much it Relies on price. Right. There's a lot of innovations, a lot of technology, things that are happening in this space that are super cool, that are not price dependent. But when you're in media, when you're looking for users, whether it's media or applications, whatever this industry is just you didn't realize how like what percent of people actually were in it for money and for speculation. And when you get into a bare market, a lot of those people leave. Right. And so it was, it was a bit alarming to me to see that. Um, and so it meant that, you know, you couldn't really do the news and the media stuff that was all about hype, because there was no hype left. Right. Um, um. And so it was all about, I mean, we, we tried to not focus on it from the very beginning anyway. So we kind of, I want to say lucked out, but I don't think that's luck. I think that's just how you should run a media company, probably. So actually, we've seen growth throughout this entire time. What's interesting is we run, like you said, Impact three, which is an agency for other newsletters as well, other podcasts, and they've actually seen some pretty big impact because a lot of them are focused on investments and investments only. And so of course, when you're in a speculative space like crypto, and it's not even just crypto, you saw this in the tech space too, right? And we have tech newsletters that got hit over this last year because we're in a recession, a lot of people are canceling subscriptions, they're getting more jobs because they can't afford their mortgage anymore. So, like, this impacted everyone. It's not just a crypto thing, but, uh, definitely our crypto clients saw the biggest impact from it. We tended to continue to grow. I think one, just because we didn't have those inflated numbers that a lot of people had from 2021. And so we started from zero in 2022 and have just focused on like, really diving into what's really happening in the space. What are the things that are actually succeeding even throughout this bear market. We kind of like, don't talk a ton about the numbers. So I think our content has been able to relate to people that are remaining in the space regardless of prices. And so we've been able to attract kind of the right people. And so that has been good. But also, like, we've learned a lot because I found a lot of clients we worked in with in 2021. They could launch anything and it would make money. You know, you could launch any old NFT collection, you could launch whatever course. It didn't matter if it had the word crypto or web3 in it, it was going to work. You can't do that anymore. And so we've had to be very strategic on the content we're putting out on the products, we're putting out the price of those products. We've been very strategic around the, the like, NFT crypto type of things, like the Web three things that we're launching. Because again, you can't just launch and not everyone's going to use it anymore because people don't. Like, back in the day, it was like if it was an nft, people would buy it, they'd mint it, they didn't care, they would just do it. Now it's not like that. And so I think we've had to just be very diligent about what we're doing, and I think that's been really good for us. And I feel very confident going into what I believe is the next cycle of crypto web3 as a result of it. So I actually think it's a very good thing and I feel blessed that we've launched throughout a bear market to be completely, completely fair.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that's great. And for those that aren't familiar with what Web3 Academy covers in, uh, your newsletter, why don't you tell everybody who the target audience is for your newsletter and kind of the kinds of things you typically, you know, write about.

Speaker D: Yeah. So we focus on the fundamental things in this space. So how are businesses going to use this stuff in the future? How are users going to use the Internet? Like, how's the Internet going to change as a result of this? So some of it is unspective stuff, some of it is on the price action of, let's say, Ethereum and blockchains and like, things. Things like that. Sure. Because we think those are fundamentally strong businesses and protocols in this space. But a lot of it's just like, how is the Internet going to change and how is business going to change as a result of blockchain technology, as a result of AI, as a result of what's happening with the Metaverse? So of these kind of emerging technologies which we all fit into Web3? How's that all going to change the way that we work, the way that we socialize, the way that we do business, the way that we shop? That's really what we're covering. It's not. How do we flip an NFT of a monkey in four days kind of thing, you know what I mean? Like, we don't care about that. I don't think that's the future of this space. Even though that's what got a lot of the attention, we stay away from that. We always kind of have.

Speaker C: So who is the demographic that you're going after?

Speaker D: So right now it's a lot of just those that are interested in tech. Right. If you're interested in technology and you want to know where the future is going, that's really what we're covering. I'd like to say it's builders or founders or developers, but it's such a mix. We're about 20, 25% developers. We don't go super technical on things, but we do dive into it on kind of surface level. It's a lot of builders though, a lot of founders of companies, whether they're big, small, whether they're Web3 native or they're Web2. And they're like, how can I start to use this stuff? My business, it's a mix of all that. But really it's just if you're into tech and you're want to build, whether it's build, invest or like found a company, then it's a good spot to listen.

Speaker C: Well. And I do want folks to know that they have, uh, a podcast. As we mentioned when I introduced Kyle, I listen specifically to your weekly breakdown. So I forget, is it Friday typically when that comes out, right, where you guys will kind of COVID the big news items that happened of the week and give your opinions on it. I find that show and I also find Carly Riley's wrap up as the two. Sometimes I'll listen to Bankless, but it's so ridiculously long and so ridiculously technical. And I know Bankless has been a customer and maybe still is a customer, but I feel like what you guys are doing is writing in such a way that is understandable by the masses and not so technical. So the business model right now is the podcast and the article and you do have a. Tell us a little about the business model, actually. How's that working?

Speaker D: Yes, we have a few revenue streams. So we're a media company, right. So think of typical business models of, of any old media company. So we have a premium newsletter, we call it Pro. So we have a free newsletter which goes over all the news. We have three articles that go out every week. And then for those that want kind of more in depth analysis, we have sort of like an on Chain newsletter where we're doing a lot of reports, where we look on chain, we pull charts, we pull a lot of data to tell you what's actually happening in the space, not just assuming what's happening. So a lot of times we'll be like, oh, Solana is at all time high of uh, users. And we're like, well, are they really? And we go look on chain and we figure out what's really going on. So that's a more like high level detailed report that goes out weekly and that's called Pro. And so we have a premium service there on our subscription that's our first product that we ever released. Recently we just released two courses. One is just explaining kind of the foundations of where the tech of Web3 is going. That's a free one. And then we have one that helps you understand how to invest in this space. And so really it's just looking at, not invest as in like trade and like, you know, flip NFTs. It's more fundamentally what's happening with this business. How does the tokenomics and the economics of these businesses work? Because it's very different than traditional businesses. And so we're, we're teaching a lot of that, which I think has been really cool. And we just launched that and that's gone really well. And uh, then of course your other kind of traditional revenue streams of sponsorships, sponsorships for our newsletter, sponsorships for our podcast as well.

Speaker C: To the media creators who are listening, and when I say media, I mean the video creators, the writers, the podcasters. Do you feel like there's still room for them to perhaps either expand their network and launch shows about Web3 or do you think there is a Web3, um, angle that they can take their existing audience under the broader umbrella of Web3? You know, uh, I'm just like, what do you want to say to any creator who's listening that wants to figure out a way Somehow to embrace Web3? What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know that everyone needs to go and talk about Web3 or teach Web3. I mean that's what we do in our podcast and I think those are great and those are useful and there's, there's a bunch of them out there now. A lot of them have also probably fallen off over the last year. But that, that's fine. That happens in these cycles. Where I think Web3 is useful is using the tech to solve business problems. This is the thing that I think a lot of people just missed in 2021, which was just like, oh, when I'm going to start a business, it's just a Web3 business. And that's, that's not the case. Like Web3 Academy is just a normal traditional media company. We use Twitter, we use ads on Facebook, we use a podcast. None of that has anything to do with Web3 whatsoever. We happen to talk about Web3 but we could have done this without any type of topic that we wanted. What we use web3 for and uh, what I think other creators should use web3 for is to solve problems in our business. For example, we have customers that pay for our subscription service which was on Substack. Now it's on a new platform called Paragraph. But either way they pay with credit card and they use Stripe. Okay, just like almost every other service out there. And that's fine. That's just a normal web2 thing. What we couldn't do though was give those people an experience on other platforms. So for example, I wanted to open up some private Discord channels with just for my pro subscribers that pay with their credit card on Stripe. There's no way to do that unless I tap into Stripe's API and find a way to build that in so that it links into Discord, which those two companies don't talk to each other right now. Then I also wanted to give some access to like discounts and rewards and things on my website. But again my WordPress website doesn't speak to Substack. They're just completely different things. Right? They're closed platforms. And so what we did is we used, we attached an NFT to our subscription. And so what happens is our customers, uh, whether they want to or not, they don't have to. They can mint an NFT along with the subscription. And that NFT then gives them access to our channels and Discord and to some um, different rewards and loyalty things on in our website. That's not really possible in Web2 unless I, I mean it would cost a lot to get someone to build me these APIs. It's essentially free and very easy to do it in web3. Now the UX isn't perfect so I don't think everyone should go do this, but it's pretty darn good. And if your customers, uh, or your audience has a wallet, it's fairly trivial for them to do. And that solved a lot of problems for us and has given a really, really good experience to our customers, which I believe has really helped increase our retention rate for our subscribers.

Speaker C: Just so everybody can wrap their Head around this. When you buy something with a credit card, you know, it is true that you could set up like, uh, woocommerce and learndash and have, you know, you buy this particular product, you get access to this particular thing within this ecosystem. But when you start crossing into these other systems. Right, Like Discord. Right. Which has got all these problems, that's where it gets interesting. So what Kyle's talking about here is purchasing an NFT and then using a third party tool like Collab Land, who we've had Anjali Young, the founder on the show, or Vulcan, I don't know which one. Are you using one of those?

Speaker D: We use Guild.

Speaker C: Okay. Or Guild. There's another one. Right. And what that does is it, it looks to make sure that the consumer has this in their wallet. Now a lot of the people that are listening right now might be like, well, my customer doesn't understand how to buy an nft. Are you guys allowing them to buy the NFT with a credit card and still making all this stuff possible or have you not gone there yet?

Speaker D: They don't even buy the nft, they just buy a subscription the normal way. So anyone can do it. And then if they want access to the extra features, then we have a form that they fill out and we airdrop them the NFT into their wallet. If they don't have a wallet, we say, here's a wallet, you can download it. We make it fairly easy for them to do it.

Speaker C: Got it. So fundamentally, talk us through how you're doing that. Then the transaction happens by credit card. And then what?

Speaker D: So they just pay on substack like they would any other newsletter. Once they do that, they get an email, you know, thanks for purchasing our product. And in there it goes. If you want to access our discord for free and access our private channels, plus get discounts and perks, whatever, connect your wallet and we'll send you an NFT and that'll give you the access into these, uh, different areas.

Speaker C: Got it. So the NFT is given for free as a perk for them buying the other thing. Right.

Speaker D: The NFT is more like a receipt rather than it is like, um, what most people think of NFTs of like a, I don't know, an image of a monkey. Like we could do no image. It doesn't matter. You never really see it. You just use it. That's it.

Speaker C: And are you doing these as soulbound NFTs so they cannot be transferable?

Speaker D: Correct? You got it.

Speaker C: Explain how that works for people that don't understand that.

Speaker D: Yeah. So there's, there's NFTs that can be bought and sold like what most of us know, but there's also something called a Soulbound NFT where once it's in a wallet, once it's minted in that wallet, you can't, you can't trade it, you can't do anything with it. So there's no, there's no speculative value to it, it's just stuck in that wallet. And so that's what we've done with these is because we don't want someone else to get access to that while this person's paying the subscription. It just stays in that wallet there.

Speaker C: What tech are you using to actually create and distribute the NFTs?

Speaker D: So we use Unlock Protocol, which I believe you've had Julian on this podcast before. Yep. Yeah. And, uh, they have a great tool. It's very, very simple to mint and to create the NFTs. And so we just use those, we airdrop it into the wallet. It's on Polygon, so it's super, super cheap and it works great.

Speaker C: And we had Jillian Janice do on the show and also we used the Unlock Protocol at Social media Marketing World 2022 to airdrop everyone who was there a free NFT. And you know, it was like a commemorative NFT for those that were there. So very interesting. So this NFT that you are giving to your customers who are subscribing to you, does it have an expiration date? Talk to us about that.

Speaker D: So what we did and to make it work along with a subscription. So Unlock has subscription based NFTs, but we didn't want people to have to pay for the NFT with crypto because it's just a bit of a pain. So we actually just tied it into our subscription through. So Unlock did this, they actually tied it into the stripe payment. So if someone ever canceled the subscription, it would expire that NF that Soulbound nft. Uh, a bit of a hack, but it worked well for us. But what's even better is we've just migrated our platform off Substack and our newsletter is now on what's called Paragraph. Paragraph is basically substack, except it has web3 native features. So what it does is every NFT someone can collect, which we'll talk more about that in a second. But what they've also done is every subscription is associated with an NFT natively. So instead of us having to build in all this like hooks and use this external platform like Unlock, Paragraph has Done it all for us. And so it just immediately will mint their NFT with Paragraph, when you sign up, you sign up with your email to a newsletter, but you also can then sign up with your wallet beside it. And so there's a couple reasons why that's important. One, as soon as they purchase, we can just automatically drop it into their wallet. We don't have to fill out a form anymore, which is really nice. If they didn't put their wallet in yet, then they'll have to do that. But that makes it really nice. The other reason it's cool is that if they have integrated, uh, their wallet into Paragraph, then we can send the newsletter through email, but we can also send that newsletter to their wallet through xmtp, if you've ever heard of that, which is like a DMs messaging service. So if you have a Coinbase Wallet, our newsletter now goes to your email and it also goes to your wallet, which is kind of crazy, but super cool.

Speaker C: Okay, so is that Paragraph xyz? Is that how you get to that particular.

Speaker D: You got it.

Speaker C: And I know they're a sponsor of yours as well. So talk to me a little bit about the experience if you can objectively.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Because obviously if you're used to using traditional email providers, like Substack is not technically a traditional email provider because they're kind of an all in one, you know, business solution. But you know, what are the pros and cons to using Paragraph? Is it a blog and a newsletter? Like, talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker D: Yeah, so Paragraph is, is basically the same thing as Substack, which is it's a combination of an email newsletter and a blog. So when you hit publish, it goes to everyone, all the emails that you have, and it also publishes it to the Internet. And now you have a blog plus newsletter all in one. Right. And then it also has the checkout process for people to go premium and all that kind of stuff. So it has all the features. Paragraph is exactly that. And so when you use it, if you've never used or heard of Web3, you wouldn't be confused. It's very normal. It's just sign up with email, you get your emails, the newsletter, so it feels like a Web two thing. You just happen to see instead of just share. And like you also see this word collect. And so like again, if you're not a web3 person, you don't even notice it. But to me, Collect is a new engagement on social media. And Paragraph just has integrated that, but it still feels like a Web2 experience, which is really great. And so we only move to it because a lot of our audience is still just Web2 people starting to learn about Web3. Some of them don't even have a wallet. And so they can still use paragraph and not have to worry about figuring out wallets and all this kind of stuff. So it's all the same normal experience. You just have those added benefits, the amplified things that Web3 does for us. So that's really what paragraph is.

Speaker C: So on the collect side of things, does this mean that when you first sign up for the newsletter, if you have your wallet, right, if you either connect your wallet or fill out a form with your wallet, you know, domain name or whatever the heck they call those little strings of characters, does that mean that you're automatically given an nft and that NFT can also be token gated into your discord? Is that what I'm hearing you say, or not exactly?

Speaker D: Not exactly. That's two different things. So let me, let me explain that for you. So if you go pro, you get an NFT tossed into your wallet, and that's like your receipt for being a pro subscriber. And then you get the discord stuff. The collect thing is different. What a, uh, collecting is, is every newsletter that we put out, it goes out like a blog. We also send it to everyone's email. You can share it just like on Substack or anything else. You can share that article on Twitter. Right? The other thing you can do is you can collect that article, meaning you actually mint that article as an NFT and you store it in your wallet and you save it.

Speaker C: Does that cost something?

Speaker D: It's free. Well, there's a cost for gas, but it's on Polygon, so it's like, I don't know, half a cent. Okay, maybe a quarter of a cent to do so it's free now. We can charge if we wanted to, or we can make it like there's a scarce amount where you can only collect, you know, 50 of them kind of thing. That's it. So why would anyone want to collect an article? That's the question I always get, like, who cares? What does that do? Why do I want to put an article in my wallet? The reason why someone might want to do that is because we can now give them benefits based off of them collecting our articles. If someone shares my article, I have no idea they've done that. If I happen to see it on Twitter or they tag us, I can see it, but then it's gone. If someone collects my article, I now have their wallet address, which means I can give them private discord call. I can give them a private zoom call with me, I can airdrop them something. I can reward them with access to anything because I have that and I'll never lose it. I can always look at who has collected any article on my newsletter and then I can always go back and reward them. Or if people have collected a certain amount of them, I can reward those people for collecting more of them. Right. So I can start to like Gamify and give different experiences multi platform again based off people collecting. I can't do that if people like or share my content. So that's the one big thing I think that's going to be really cool about collecting.

Speaker C: Very fascinating because you are signing up with presumably your name and email address and your wallet. When they collect you can identify who they are. Is that true?

Speaker D: That's a good question. Can I do that or, or can

Speaker C: you at least email them?

Speaker A: You know what I mean?

Speaker C: Because you have their email address, right?

Speaker D: I can, yes. I can tie their, their wallet address to their email. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Speaker C: So that way you could email everyone who was the first collector if you only allowed 50 of them.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And you could give them some sort of special incentive because the key is to communicate back to them. And not everybody has that layer communication protocol thing because it's not widely adopted yet. Right, yeah, exactly, Fascinating.

Speaker D: Exactly.

Speaker C: All right, so you're using kind of a crypto NFT incentivized newsletter platform. You've got a, ah, premium membership that if they want access to certain things you would drop them, airdrop them in nft. Is there any other interesting use cases that you have put to use in your business that we have not yet talked about that seem to be Web3 related?

Speaker D: Yeah, we've done a few other things. So we have two courses as I mentioned and one of the things that again we can't do is create experiences for people who have completed those courses or have bought those courses. Right. So they buy the courses on our WordPress site using Learndash.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: And WooCommerce how they buy it and we can do experiences for them on that site. But again if I wanted to create some channels for them over on Discord, I can't do that. If I wanted to give them access to something else, I can't do that. Right. And so again the big thing that I think Web3 unlocks is sort of interoperability. Right. Because once something is in Your wallet. You can give them an experience on any platform that allows you to connect a wallet. So what we've done is when you complete our courses, we give them the ability to mint m a proof of completion NFT of that course. And so what's cool about this is one, it's non transferable. So again this is not a speculative NFT by any means. You don't go and sell it. We don't want people to hold this NFT that have never actually taken our course. What's cool though is someone can take this course, mint that NFT one. They have a badge that says hey, I've completed this. So now they can show that and prove that and they can prove that it came from Web3 Academy. They can't fake it to other companies in Web3 in case they want to get a job. They can say, hey, I've taken the Web3 Rabbit Hole course at Web3 Academy. So I have some good understanding of the foundations of this space. And so that's something that's really cool. Now whether people do that or not, I'm not sure yet. We hope that that's where it goes.

Speaker C: Are you facilitating this through, I'm assuming they're going through your course or taking some quizzes and they can't skip to this point.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So you know they've completed the course and then at a certain point you can claim this nft. Is this also unlock protocol or is

Speaker D: there some other it is unlocked protocol Again, you got it. And we basically just embedded the mint process in that page. So you can only get to that page if you purchased it and then if, or signed up if it's a free one and you've completed everything to get all the way to the end, that's the only way you can actually see that page. And then right in there you put your wallet and it mints to you.

Speaker C: Perfect. You were about to talk about something else related to this or not related to this. I'm not sure.

Speaker D: Yeah, so the other thing we've done is, okay, so if you've completed the course, you mint that nft. Now you can connect your wallet into our site and if you have that proof of completion nft, you get a discount on the next course. The course that's kind of like the level two of that. Uh, or you get a discount on our pro membership, which again that's on a different platform. So in Web two you couldn't link those now because you have the nft, we can. And so we're going to do other things. We're not quite sure what else we'll do in terms of discounts or perks or things with nft. But that's the other beauty of it is it doesn't really matter what we do in the future. We always have that wallet address of the person that completed that course course. And so whatever else we put out five years from now, we can always go back and get them. Even if Loot Learndash and WordPress goes away and shuts down and that course disappears, we still always have that ability to go back and see who completed that course and when. And that to me is very, very powerful because then I can always reward our, uh, earliest or our most engaged, you uh, know, audience members and customers.

Speaker C: Now let's talk a little bit about Polygon. Back when I did this, which would have been In March of 2022 2, it was tricky because I had to train people how to first of all set up a metamask and then how to add the, the extra chain, you know, because Matic. Right. And. And then we, we airdropped it to them.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: We didn't actually have them have to purchase Matic and all that fun stuff. Is it still complicated or has it gotten to the point now where the user experience is not nearly as complicated for them to quote, unquote, collect, if you will, uh, Polygon based nft.

Speaker D: It's getting better. And I say that because you used to have to not only just bridge your Matic or whatever over, you used to also have to add the network into MetaMask. You have to like go and like put in these weird numbers.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, rc.

Speaker D: So weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That, that is now done for you. The moment you connect into something that's plugged in, it just automatically does it on MetaMask. So that's one feature that. Okay, great. The bridging thing, we've gotten rid of all that because we airdrop it. So we pay for that gas cost, which is next to nothing. So it's fine. So you don't have to worry about any of that.

Speaker C: So technically they need just a wallet address. Right? Eth. Wallet.

Speaker D: They just need a wallet. Exactly. Yeah. So that's. That's much better. There are other tools that have already out actually that we're working on to work with, which is one's called Decent. I think it's Decent. XYZ Decent. They have something called the box. And what's really cool that they have is that once wallets start to integrate this, which a few already have. When you go to buy an NFT or whatever on any single platform, it doesn't matter which one, it doesn't matter what tokens you have and it doesn't matter what chain you're on. It auto bridges auto swaps and does it all in one press for you. So you literally one click and it buys that thing and it just takes whatever eth you have anywhere and it bridges it over and swaps into whatever token you needed and gets you that nft. And so that's the thing that I think is going to be just so incredible for the space because we need that to make this just like seamless and abstract away a lot of the blockchain stuff.

Speaker C: Well, and just to be clear, it is D E C E N T X, Y Z. Just in case you think it's D E S C E N T. Yeah, uh, D E C C E N T. So the box essentially just kind of figures out how to do all this fun stuff for a better user experience.

Speaker D: Okay, this is where like I think this space is going is we're going to abstract away most of this blockchain stuff and we won't even know we're really using blockchain, but we'll use it because why? It allows us to do interoperable things across different platforms. It allows us to have self custody which some people care about. Honestly, not most people don't care about that, but for me anyway, it solves a lot of business problems by uh, allowing me to know my customers and then give them experiences that I otherwise can't do. And I think that's the real selling point of at least of NFTs right now.

Speaker C: Okay, so on the newsletter side you figured out a way to integrate Web3 and do it, but what about on the podcasting side and the video side? It feels like to me right now it's Apple, Google, Spotify and Amazon, which are not necessarily web3friendly in any obvious sense from a uh, audio RSS distribution side of things. And then obviously it's almost purely YouTube on the long form video kind of stuff. Do you anticipate a day where that's going to change? What's your thoughts on that?

Speaker D: I uh, do, yeah. So there's, there's two ways. So one, I think this collect feature I think is really cool and I think there's a lot that goes with that and I think that it's not just going to be for newsletters. Like I said, I think all content will have it, I think in the coming years. We're going to have a new engagement, a new piece of engagement. So there's share, there's, like, there's comment, and I think collect will be everywhere. If you use Lens protocol, for example, uh, this is already a thing. Every post is collectible. Right. And I think that's going to be a really cool thing because we can already, for example, we can already give certain experiences or discounts or perks or access to people who collect some of our posts over on Lens, as well as collect our articles over on paragraph. And then we can match them and go, okay, this person's collected two articles and has collected, you know, two of our videos on Lens. And so they're a super fan and we can, like, give them whatever, a certain channel or something. Right. So again, the collecting thing makes it interoperable, and so I think one social media will do that. And so Lens, we're already posting our podcasts on there, and people collect them and we can do that kind of stuff with it. So that's cool. The other thing is there's a company called Pods. It's not live yet, but it's coming. Friend of ours, uh, Lucas, who used to be with Bankless, he's the one that's created this, and he's bringing on chain podcasts. And so basically it'll be like an RSS feed. And so it'll still go on Spotify and everything, but you'll also have the ability to collect them. And so again, just giving different experiences through podcast.

Speaker B: Uh.

Speaker C: Oh, interesting. Pods for podcasts, I see.

Speaker D: Okay, you got it.

Speaker C: Do you have any sense of what the domain name on that's going to be as far as the URL?

Speaker D: I don't know what the URL is yet, and I don't. No if the. Let me see if I can find it. But.

Speaker C: So if you Google Lucas Pods, Bankless, you might be able to find it, I would imagine. Or maybe, maybe, maybe you can tell me his Twitter handle and we can just go ahead and mention that in the show notes if anybody wants to follow Lucas, you know.

Speaker D: Yeah, let me, uh, keep going with questions. I'll try and find it as we, uh, as we go here.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Okay. So podcasting, what about video? You know, that's the bigger question, right?

Speaker D: Yeah. So, by the way, his Twitter is 0x_Lucas. It's L U C A S. Okay. Uh, and it's at Collect. Pods is. Is the Twitter handle for Pods.

Speaker C: Okay, cool.

Speaker D: So, yeah, he's going to do some cool stuff. They've done a lot of this with Bankless previously they've done these sort of like, uh, collecting on podcasts. And so I think he's going to do something pretty cool there.

Speaker C: Video.

Speaker D: Video, yeah. So again, on Lens, you can collect video. Where that's going to go, I'm not. I'm not quite sure yet. Obviously video is a file that like blockchain still quite small, low. And so to upload videos as NFTs is like. It's not the easiest thing in the world just yet, but it's, it's definitely coming and it works pretty seamless on Lens right now. So again, I think all content will be collectible. Just like all content, you can like it or share it. Right now, I think there'll be a collect feature for everything. So I do think that's coming. The other thing that I think will be really cool videos. If we think about what TikTok is, which is kind of the next, the next gen of social media, TikTok is kind of like a remix of all content, right? Someone comes out with a video and then someone takes that video and then adds something to it, whether it's music or they do stitch whatever these stitches are that everyone does where they like take it and then they like remix it by putting their own spin on it. And then it keeps happening. And so there's like the way that TikTok ends up going is these videos that go viral end up having like 10 different people that were a part of making this video what it is. But there's no way of knowing who is all part of that. And one of the things that I think will be really cool with collecting is you can take a video, you can collect it, and then you can alter it, remix it, do whatever. And when you publish it, the chain, you see who was the original owner of that. And so one, it just gives kind of like provenance. You can see who was the original owner, but also you might be, if revenue comes from that, whether that's ad revenue or something else, you could, because of smart contracts, split that up between the owners that all created that content. And so I think there's going to be some really cool innovations in this space, in the content space, as a result of putting content on chain. I think we're probably a long ways away from that being a real thing and going big time. But that's one of the things I think, just like Music NFTs, I think we'll see the same thing with that. So I'm pretty excited for that. But I think we're still years from that being a real thing.

Speaker C: Yeah, we had another guest on the show and I'm drawing a mental blank on Farouk. Okay, Farouk from GM M. Right. Web3. So he is doing some cool stuff, working with Fair XYZ in a partnership where he's got this thing called Stubbs and everybody can go back and listen to that episode. But he is rewarding people that are active consumers of his live content, specifically when he goes live on spaces and you can earn points and then you can use those points to get other kinds of cool things, which is really intriguing. What do you think is going to be the big unlock for the mass collection movement? For lack of better words, like, what is the missing piece right now? Is it one of the big folks coming out with this feature that's going to all of a sudden have everybody come behind them? Or what do you think is what's going to be the inflection point?

Speaker D: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, right now the web3 platforms are super niche. They're all beta, they're closed. Like lens is 100,000 farcasters, like maybe 20,000 at this point. I don't know that those are going to compete with the big ones. Right. Like, collecting is cool and it's great, especially for the creators. But like, most people don't care. I mean, most people don't have wallets, number one, so they're not going to be able to collect regardless. And most people don't care about like custody their own content. I care because when I one time I had a big Facebook profile with some big groups and Facebook rugged me.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker D: So I get the issue of not owning your content, owning your accounts. Right. But most people in the world, they don't care at all. So I struggle to think that the mainstream move over to Lens, move over to Farcaster anytime soon. Where I do think this happens is probably on Reddit. So Reddit already has the ability to mint and remix your profile picture. Right. Again, most people don't know that it's an NFT. These are the Reddit avatars. There's been 20 million minted in the last year. There's been 17 million people that have interacted with these 17 million accounts. Doesn't mean that they're all real people because you can have multiple accounts. But it's a lot tougher to make a second Reddit account that has enough activity to mint m one of these. So it's a. It's a pretty decent number, pretty big and so that's, that's on the, your profile picture. People love to like, identify as whatever, and so they use these NFTs and they can like get different hats for them and different whatever. And so it's a fun thing that's done really well. But Reddit is about to release community points on Reddit and what community points are. They already have a point system there, but it's not on chain. And so it's basically like the more content you create or the more like you comment and help people inside of a community, on Reddit, a subreddit, you get these like, points, which gets you access. What they're doing though, is they're turning that off. I think it's the end of this month and the speculation is next month they're going to launch it on chain because they've already done that with two subreddits. And so I think this is going to be a big catalyst to teach people in social and specifically on Reddit here about on chain things. Right? Because they're all going to need wallets to one, have their, uh, NFT avatar and two, to collect these community points, which there will be value to them. So I think a lot of people will get a wallet because they can create content and just make money, right? Like, if you can create content not make money, or you can create content make money on the same platform, you're obviously going to go and sign up for the account that makes you the money. And they've made a very easy, seamless experience over there. So Reddit kind of gets this whole on chain movement. And so I think they're going to be the ones that start to push this first. Now, these community points are not content as collectible content, but I think they're on track to start doing that and lead the way. So I kind of get the feeling that they're going to be first to do this, but I don't know, let's see.

Speaker C: Real fascinating parallel is D gods, which I happen to own one, as you know, has been in the press as we're recording this a lot. And you get a points every minute that you stake your D God. Okay, yeah, so my D God has like 370,000 points and then they launched this thing called parlor points. Okay. So if you check in every single day and you spend some of those points, so it's it. The way it works is you get three spends and each one of them is 800 points. Okay? So again, you get a point every minute or whatever, right? So you can spend These points, and they spin a raffle. And the raffle that you win is you win either some of their dust protocol, which is actually their, their token, or you can win other prizes. And it just kind of collects in the corner. And every day they encourage you to come back to spend these points. And they also have a tax where if you want to spend more points, you can, but it's going to cost you 1.25% more. And the more you spend, the more they're going to tax you. Right. So what they've done here, which is really fascinating, is they've given points to people that have had their stake the longest, and then those points are redeemable every single day for random little prizes, which I think is really kind of a fascinating model. And I've had Kevin the COO on the show, and what he said is what they're trying to build is tool sets for Web three. So imagine eventually you have customers, Kyle, and they earn points for as long as they remain a customer, and then they can spend those points for gifts and stuff like that. That's kind of a fascinating model that obviously is off chain until it's on chain.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: It's not till you actually collect it, but these kind of things. It kind of sounds similar to what Reddit is doing. Right. And maybe this will be a retention mechanism for people.

Speaker D: You know, that's exactly. I think it's going to like the community points when they have value and they can go to another ecosystem. Like when their community points just on Reddit, they can only have so much worth when they're community points that are on Reddit that you can then trade and sell or use, again, interoperable tokens. Use those points on other platforms and in other experiences, or sell them for real value, they become so much better. And I think it's going to bring a lot of people to creating a lot more content on Reddit, which is exactly what Reddit wants. Because what do they do? Well, they sell ads to the people on their platform. Right. And so it makes complete sense that they're going to go down this route, and I think it's going to be really big. So I'm super excited for it.

Speaker C: Okay, I. Let's talk a little bit about, about how you think AI is going to help or hurt Web3. What are your views on that?

Speaker D: Yeah, so, I mean, so first to clarify for me, I think AI is part of Web3. So, uh, a lot of people, I think, mix up the words web3 and blockchain for me. I think web3 is the next iteration of the Internet. And what I think that is is an ownable, personalized and immersive Internet. Okay? And so what that means is ownable. That's the blockchain part, personalized, that's AI and immersive. Uh, that's like your VR, AR type thing. And I think all of these technologies are merging together to create a whole new Internet for us. And I think that's what Web3 is. A lot of people think Web3 is just blockchain and that's not, uh, that's not what I think it is. So just want to clarify that. But I do think AI is going to be a big catalyst for blockchain specifically. I think it's going to be a reason why a lot of us get wallets. And actually it's going to tie into what we just talked about in social media. So there's a few reasons why I think this. The sort of easiest one I think for people to understand is when AI first came out. Well, not when AI first came out, when ChatGPT and a lot of these like, user friendly platforms first came out, let's say late last year. All of a sudden there was the song that came out from Drake, where it was an AI generated song, right? And it's. I'm not sure if you've heard it, but it was, I can't remember the name of it now, but it was a great song. It sounded just like Drake. And everyone's like, wow, this song's amazing. However, Drake didn't create it. It was someone else who used an AI tool, uh, and copied his voice and made a song and they made a bunch of them and it became a big problem. And Drake was like, shit, what do I do with this? He was like, do I like he was getting his lawyers involved. How are we going to shut this down? And a lot of platforms like Spotify listed the song thinking it was Drake's and they were like, wait a minute, this isn't. So they had to, they had to like delete it. And so obviously you're like, okay, well this is going to become a problem. How the heck would you ever know who made this? Is Spotify going to call every sing artist and confirm that they made it? Like, absolutely not. So we have a problem of fake content that can be made at scale with AI and then we don't know who actually made it. And so the one tool that we have that every platform, every tech platform can use to ensure who made it is blockchain. Right. You can verify on chain who published that content. And so what Drake can do moving forward is get a wallet, have Drake Eth. And moving forward, just every single piece of content that he creates, you wrap it as an nft. And again, the NFT doesn't have to be like a thing that you can buy or sell or trade or whatever. All it is is just a piece of content. And I think every content gets wrapped as an NFT because when you wrap it as an empty, it gives it a unique identifier and it shows you when it was published and it was Drake, uh, Eth, uh, or who it was that published it. So it doesn't mean that other people can't create Drake songs. It's just you can always go and click on them, look and make sure it was Drake that published it.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: You know, I find this very intriguing because I think what I'm hearing you say is this is an authentication mechanism to know exactly who, who's the owner, where's the source, Right. And this could be used in articles, publications, it could be used to help debunk fake news. Right. I mean all these kinds of things, right.

Speaker D: It literally fixes the Internet because the Internet is completely broken with AI in terms of content.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Uh, and it's only. It's already been a problem for many, many, many years and it's going to get way, way, way worse with AI. It's already. I don't think people realize how much content is currently artificially made right now. And so I think using that is one. It's so it's verifies, right? You can authenticate who made it. The other thing is to go back to the interoperability is right now when someone creates a song, they've got to go and upload it to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, like what? I don't even know all the lists, but there's a million of them. You got to go and individually launch in each one, right?

Speaker C: Amazon Music. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. Because they're all centralized databases. And then now what these platforms are trying to do to fix this problem is now you got to pay for their, like Twitter Blue and whatever. You got to pay so that you can be verified that it's actually you. Right? So now you've got to go as an artist and be verified on Spotify, verified on Apple Podcasts and blah blah, blah all the way through. Instead, if you just uploaded your music on top of Ethereum and wrapped it as nft and then Spotify and Apple Podcasts, whatever, they just read the chain and they can just now show your song and it's interoperable across all these platforms. Now that's not going to happen right away, but it is an easy solution that already exists. And I mean a lot of these tech platforms are already doing some of this. Like Twitter has already integrated into ethereum with your PfP. Like there's a lot of people that you can verify that PfP with NFTs, right? Instead of uploading your PFP to Twitter, you just put it on Ethereum blockchain and then Twitter reads the chain and you don't actually load it up. Twitter, I think you can save a lot of the problems with the Internet with doing that with all content.

Speaker C: Wow, Kyle, this has been a fascinating discussion. If, uh, people want to connect with you on the socials, do you have a preferred and also if they want to check out Web3Academy, where do you want to send them?

Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So you can follow me on Twitter, just my name, Kyle Reed Head. So last name is R E I D H E A D. That's the easiest place to get in touch with me. My DMs are open, so to feel free, feel free to reach out there. And if you want to check us out on web 3Academy, you can just go to W3Academyio and you'll be able to find our newsletter, our podcast and everything from there.

Speaker C: Kyle Reed had Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us.

Speaker D: Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me.

Speaker C: Hey, if you missed anything, we took

Speaker A: all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com W88

Speaker C: this brings us to the end of

Speaker A: yet another episode of the Web3B business podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner.

Speaker C: I hope you make the best out

Speaker A: of your day and may Web3 continue to change your world.

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