Exploring the Roblox of Web3 with Portals

Transcript

GMGM, welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of Devantel. So, if you didn't know, Devontel is a 30-minute podcast allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Adam Gomez, who is the founder of Portals. So, if you're not familiar, Portals is a noode game platform that lets anyone create and explore immersive games and worlds in the browser. So, if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Adam, learn about portals, and how you can get started with the platform today. All right, let's get into it. >> GMGM, welcome to the show, Adam.

Pleasure to have you on, man. >> How's it going? Thanks for having me. >> No problem. Thank you for coming on. Uh yeah, I I guess uh before we get into all the the great content you have around portals, um would you just like to give a brief introduction about yourself if folks aren't familiar? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm the CEO of Portals. Uh we started this back in 2021 as a passion project. It was about three uh developers building this out. My background was in games and software. Uh had always been very much a gamer. fascinated by the games industry, working in the games industry um pretty early on in my career and uh this idea for Portals came about

and we were just obsessed with it. Could not stop thinking about it um and said, you know, let's we're not really sure how we're going to get this funded and what this can become, but we we can't stop thinking about it. Let's let's just start building it and see what happens. So, that was kind of the the origin uh back in 2021. >> Nice one. Yeah, I mean a lot of a lot of these um new age uh projects kind of start this way. It's like a group of friends kind of come together. They either want to build something fun or or like solve a particular problem they have and then it ends up being this um awesome kind of experience where you guys end up building a company and

that's it seems like what's happening. >> It took a life on it of its own. Definitely. >> Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. These are the best ones. Um yeah and and and I guess uh how did you find yourself in in the world of technology and crypto? Like what what led you to to this space other other than uh this hackathonyy uh type of project? >> Yeah. Um so like I mentioned games is always kind of what what drove me. I think a lot of programmers these days you'll find um did get started with just kind of an interest in games. How do you how do how are games made? Um can I make my own game? And that's what got me into

programming uh pretty pretty early on. Um and kind of never stopped uh was always interested in kind of making hobby games. Um, and it wasn't until about 20, let's see, actually got into crypto pretty early on, just from the technical perspective. It seemed kind of interesting as like a nerdy thing. Uh, internet money. Didn't fully understand kind of the the the mission of it and didn't really dive into crypto until a little bit later, maybe 2020, um, is when I really started getting, you know, deeper into it. But the concept of Bitcoin was was pretty interesting.

Bought some Bitcoin back then. Sold it at a loss. Uh this is back in like 2013, 2014. Um and uh but yeah, it wasn't really until the concept of smart contracts and everything that you know, Ethereum represented uh really kind of captured captured uh my interest uh to dive deeper and start you know, playing around with the tech. Um, so yeah, DeFi summer, all of that was really when, you know, we kind of really started diving in. Um, and it wasn't until, let's see, 2021 kind of Salana came on our radar and as kind of our our background in the games

and software world up to that point, um, we're very focused on product and user experience. And when we first saw Salana, uh it was very interesting from that perspective. From a user experience perspective, it looked like it was um pretty advanced in terms of, you know, low transaction speeds. The the wallet experience was just a lot better. Uh back in 2021, there was, you know, it was pretty uh the the hype for crypto was kind of fever pitched back then, uh as like, you know, the next wave of the internet. And if there was going to be a consumer platform that was more accessible, it looked like Salana was

was very kind of primed for that. So that's how it caught our attention. Um, we ended up taking what we had been building with portals, which initially was never actually intended to be a crypto project. We had already been building it for 6 months, 7 months, this kind of prototype. um and basically saw that there was a lot of interest for what we were building in the crypto space. So, you probably remember the metaverse uh narrative and and hype cycle um broadly, right? It wasn't just crypto. Crypto folks, I think, saw some some really interesting truly interesting things,

things that are that we still find interesting about how crypto and the metaverse fit together in terms of interoperable assets and worlds and games and all of these things. Um, obviously broadly I think the the narrative around the metaverse a lot of folks you know that term ended up carrying a lot of negative connotations both inside of crypto and outside of crypto because I think uh the general conception was you know Facebook's you know live in the metaverse VR whatever that sort of idea was I think is what you know ended up becoming more of like the mainstream conception of of what the metaverse is.

Uh, and not too many people wanted that. It seemed like something that, you know, Facebook was sort of forcing and Facebook has kind of, you know, gone away from, um, from leaning too heavily into that at this point as well. Um, but the piece that was always really interesting to us and is still very interesting to us is, you know, the interoperability of the games and the worlds and um, really the games universe side of what the metaverse means. So both Roblox, Fortnite, their known, you know, their founders call those platforms metaverse platforms because you can go in and create and they're social and multiplayer and and that's

really kind of how those are those platforms are defined. And we've always seen that as a huge opportunity with with what we're doing with portals. Um what was most exciting was we've seen how 3D technology has kind of come to the browser for the first time and that's ultimately what what the the kernel of the idea was for Portals was uh could you take you know a Nintendo quality nextG Roblox like platform and put it in the browser where you know the graphics look awesome. Um, one of the advantages of doing it in the browser is let's say somebody's playing a game that's built in portals and they're playing it on

stream, on Twitch, on YouTube, and their live audience of 10,000 people can see this game that's being played. They see that the streamer is having a ton of fun. Um, and they could just click a link and now they're they're in. So, the the barrier to entry, you know, you don't need to go to Steam and download a game and pay money up front and whatever else it is. It's like this is an amazing looking game. Looks really fun. I'm definitely clicking that link. So your conversion rate of just folks being able to jump in, you know, your accessibility is just is uh way way higher. So that was always really exciting to us. And then just from a product perspective, we always uh wanted to lower the the barrier to entry on the developer side

as well. So, we were inspired by things like Animal Crossing or uh there's a a game on PlayStation called Little Bigplet, which was very accessible. So, even if you've never made games before, uh these platforms kind of allowed you to express your creativity. This Little Bigplet in particular, you know, built this huge audience of folks that were just, you know, obsessed with creating things because it was so fun and charming and easy to create things. and it felt, you know, there was a lot of fun in the creation aspect. So, uh, those two pieces were really the the foundation for portals, uh, as far as easy to get into via the browser and the accessibility from that standpoint and

then accessibility from the, um, uh, the building side of things where it's just easier to create. So, uh, it becomes a lot easier for anybody to create levels and games and worlds and and all that. So that's really been kind of the two found foundational uh pillars for portals and then like I mentioned lots of excitement in the world of crypto for you know the metaverse and it's like we were definitely at the right place at the right time with what we were building where we had this kind of ambitious vision for building the next generation Roblox and um found Salana submitted the prototype of portals uh into their hackathon implemented Salana Uh and what had gone from a very

sort of smallcale project in terms of a couple people working in their apartments on this passion project. There was like a spotlight on us overnight um with this hackathon and investors you know um kind of really you know really wanting to invest in the project and all that. So, it was kind of um a a really awesome opportunity and you know, we've had to kind of evolve with the changing tastes of the market and what crypto and what consumer crypto means and and all that, but um you know, we've never kind of lost sight of our ultimate goal of building a platform that is mainstream and does kind of get looked at as a nextgen uh roadblock. So, uh, there's definitely the crypto side

of portals, um, that has really been our foundation and where we've been building and focusing over the last four years, but ultimately have been, um, working towards that. Okay, now it's time for, you know, mainstream adoption and scale, uh, which is kind of right where we're at. Uh, which is, you know, we're kind of in a really exciting period where where we're moving into starting to get portals out there more broadly. And I mean like you guys have have chosen a a great vertical to kind of explore. I mean the the whole gaming uh and crypto um uh sector I think it's it's like a lot of people kind of brush it off because like ah like how like

how's crypto going to work with with with games and and this that and the other thing. But um if a lot of people who are new to crypto don't realize there aren't actually a lot of uh usable apps out there. A lot of a lot of things in this in this sector are very much infra and built for developers and we haven't seen or well we're starting to see now um but there really hasn't been um too many apps that are just apps but you don't know that like crypto is kind of behind the scenes or blockchain is kind of behind the scenes powering it.

So, >> um, being able to build, uh, games in like a Roblox experience, I think is a is a pretty dope pretty dope way to to kind of, um, bridge that gap, um, from regular user to >> totally. Yeah. >> Crypto, right? >> Yeah. I think so many people are, uh, disillusioned, even folks that are very crypto native, with the sort of lack of more mainstream applications. And it's, you know, it's been a lot of infrastructure. I think the important thing to underline is there really hadn't even been functional blockchains until pretty recently, scalable blockchains. And you're just

starting to see the first kind of mainstream consumer applications that are built on blockchain like Poly Market and Kelshi, I think, are pretty good examples. Um, and there there's more coming for sure. Right. So, we're we're still very bullish on that uh on on what's kind of happening. >> Yeah. H as we should be. Uh before uh we we continue on, I want to bring up a a question here from the crowd. Uh so Angie asks, uh I'm kind of mediocre in uh Unreal Engine building. I can build environments, but when trying to make gameplay, I'm not there. Is it easier to build a game with portals compared with Unreal?

>> Absolutely. Absolutely it is. And that's still both. So, Fortnite, Roblox, um, Fortnite is kind of built on that Unreal foundation, um, which requires a whole lot of learning of the tools to be able to create anything. So, one of the cool things, you know, one of the things that we definitely built into the very uh the very foundation of portals was make it as easy as humanly possible to get into and start having fun and and creating and actually turn folks that maybe never were going to learn how to code or go into Unreal uh and learn all the complicated tools, but sort of f find themselves

kind of going deeper and deeper into portals where it's like it's so accessible. It's like, wow, I'm I'm making a level now. I'm making a where what else can I do with this? Um, so we've had tons of people over over kind of the lifetime of the project get into portals start sort of with that foundation of I'm just going to poke around and start maybe, you know, drop a tree here, drop a little robot and a box here, and it evolves into I've built a whole city now. That was really fun. That was cool. uh they're spending tons and tons of time just using portals kind of like digital Lego. And from there they've evolved and become full-on game developers where they're now creating games. I'll actually pull up um put

something on screen now because this is a really cool uh cool example. Um, so some of these games that you're seeing here in this video were all part of um a recent game jam that we did. And it's the same case for all of these creators where they've never created games before um are non-coders, but they got into portals and were able to learn how to kind of create games basically with without ever learning how to how to code and and getting into this. So, there's some examples here of some folks that did follow that path of kind of using portals as like digital Lego. This is one of the submissions. Um, and now

they're making full-on games with storylines and, you know, cutscenes and doing amazing things where we're helping these creators now get their games built-in portals um, more mainstream attention. So helping them with tools that get their game out there on Tik Tok where people can put in an email address and say you know this game that you're making which is like Resident Evil um kind of like yeah definitely has a lot of Resident Evil vibes this one called uh the doll maker um and is we're we're getting it out there. We're we're showing that uh even if you started off just kind of interested in portals as like a you know this is kind of cool

digital Lego how it can totally take a life of its own you know that little that little hobby turning into I'm releasing games now that are getting tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people you know interested in this game and more and more people that have been building in portals for you know the last couple years that we've been out there um are are starting to turn this into a full career. So, they're switching careers basically to become like game developers. So, really really exciting um fulfilling work to kind of see that see that happening.

>> Yeah, this looks amazing. And uh I was just looking at a comment on X. Um, uh, Nicholas says, uh, someone should make a, uh, a build out of Mordor eer, uh, uh, environment in portals, uh, because my background is Mordor and I've been Mordor quite a bit. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. U, >> but, uh, yeah, this this looks this looks quite amazing and and this is this is open for anybody to to come in and and and take a stab at building their own verment. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you've been pretty deep into the kind of the Salana space, the Salana communities and Salana Twitter, you probably haven't

seen too much of Portals. Um, we had kind of, you know, been been building out the platform, building out its capabilities, uh, and, you know, more more recently opened it up where anybody can go in, create an account, uh, and start, uh, choosing from templates. So, you can start Mountain Village. Uh, actually I think the Mordor this this level there's a big like lava volcano behind him. Um, and and just start start creating. I think actually one of the other this is kind of a Mordor like uh like level um which is a really cool again this game was kind of built in a couple of days.

uh you know with the no code tools um and you know you know a couple a week later everybody's kind of pouring in and you know competing to go in and and mint this was kind of crypto audience focused as most of our stuff has been uh up to this point um bunch of people pouring in to try to mint one of the one of the collectibles one of the one of the the uh outfits in the game um by by completing it by being one of the first people to complete it. So, uh, yeah, now it's completely open to to everybody to just go and start start poking around and creating.

>> Amazing. And, um, there's a question here again in the crowd from, uh, Angie. Um, is this like a desktop experience like the builder or is it, uh, completely in browser? >> It's completely in browser. >> Oh, awesome. There you go, Angie. Uh regardless of what uh uh what side you're on on the PC versus Mac uh uh spectrum, uh you can indeed go ahead and play around with portals. >> Yeah. Yeah. All this footage is is shot uh in browser. >> Oh wow. And uh I I noticed there's also um a portals token component. Um like could you tell us what the utility is there and uh yeah what how does it work on the uh with the portals platform?

>> Yeah, definitely. I think one of the most powerful aspects of crypto and tokens that I think most people see and realize is how um you can you can decentralize the efforts towards building out that platform and building more games. So, one of the things that we have been doing both a mix of cash and tokens, but for folks that are kind of seeing the opportunity here and like really doing their due diligence on um the broader games market and understanding that there have been a lot of um attempts at competing with Roblox,

but were never really, you know, fully on the money in terms of, you know, h how are they doing that? what what is interesting and new and different about this platform that's going to do that. And I think folks are seeing really in the last 10 years, there's really only one platform that that is doing it is sort of demonstrating that um these elements of it being in browser and easy to build with are extremely powerful. Um, so now as we're kind of doing that, you know, starting to move into our mainstream push, having that mix of folks where they're in crypto, there's whether it's, you know, a 10,000 or 100,000 in cash uh funding for here's a game that we want created. You know,

submit your application because, you know, this is your team and this is your idea for uh what you want to get created. um tokens are involved with that where you can again kind of see broadly there's a really really big opportunity here you know if there's uh how many platforms do have that kind of mass market uh consumer application same way that poly market and Kelshi have sort of shown. So I think that's that's one just really I think really important piece to to how tokens are are powerful and and you know why they're important to crypto projects. Um, meanwhile, you have there there's a whole white paper that talks about how all of the

different elements of the token tie into the uh the economy and the assets and and everything else. Um, which is kind of a you know deeper deeper dive, but ultimately it's really from that perspective of um being able to utilize a token to kind of build value into the network um as one of them. But all kinds of different utility. One other thing I'll mention is there's some specific uh functionality with how we designed portals to be interesting even for short-term traders. So, I won't spend too much time on that, but there's a lot of elements that are that we thought were important because, you know, crypto markets really aren't at a place yet where um people are buying tokens and they're not trading

at, you know, multiples of future cash flow necessarily yet. a lot of it still is kind of driven by speculation and height and and other factors. Um, so we we have kind of baked in some some interesting, you know, reasons to kind of keep people on their toes and and uh have portals be very interesting kind of from a short-term perspective. Um and and I'll just give just a quick example of of that where with that incubator some of those incubator pieces that I mentioned um the same way virtuals works I'm not sure how familiar you are with virtuals and and how their kind of tokconomics are structured where uh they're creating liquidity pools with the the base virtual token. So when new

projects are launching and launching their own tokens on the platform um that virtual token forms a liquidity pool and uh sort of creates a sync for the token. So, we're doing a lot of that as well where folks are able to launch their own tokens within portals to kind of power their own mini game studios, um their own game worlds, and you know, we're putting a lot of energy behind that so that they're having successful launches. And then, um that's leading to, you know, a pretty significant token sync. Uh and that's kind of one of those short term short-term mechanics. So, that's yet to roll out yet. Um but yeah, that's kind of kind of coming soon.

>> Awesome. Awesome. And and yeah, uh uh one of my next questions was um what's uh what's next on the road map for um uh for you guys? Um can you share any uh alpha that that might be coming in 2026? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we just made a post on our Discord the other day um that kind of goes into more of the plan and how we're ready for mainstream adoption. kind of just rehashing some of the things that we had um seen over the years in terms of you know we're we're breaking out of the like the the biggest opportunity really is breaking out of the crypto bubble um and going mainstream and here's kind of all the evidence that we've seen with our

testing with whether it's Tik Tok reaching out to us and saying how are you guys converting so so many people how many like how are you guys doing that where so many people are signing up with emails uh and these were tests that were shown knowing, you know, there's there's a lot of interest for what we're building here outside of crypto circles. Um, so other examples like that, you know, we've been a lot of Twitch streamers with millions of followers have been reaching out to us. They've heard about portals and they really do see it as a nextgen Roblox and uh are wanting to stream it and get it in front of their audience. So, we're just kind of covering very high level. Here's the plan on how that's going to work. We're we're releasing a deeper dive document that, you know, really gets into the

nitty-gritty. Here's the uh here's the objective for the next 3 to 6 months. Um here's here are the obstacles that we know are in front of us. Some of those being gamers in the web 2 world are against crypto by and large. Uh and they can be very opinionated about that. There's it just has to be handled very carefully. Um, we have seen examples of some of the other games. I'm not sure if you've heard of Off the Grid. They did more of a web two push on on Twitch, uh, and did it pretty successfully in terms of the reception from the general gaming crowd where most of the crypto stuff is behind the scenes. Um, some of the

streamers that were playing it that do have, you know, influence and and are sort of taste makers in in the games industry broadly, uh, were like, "The crypto piece makes sense." like why would you build your own Steam marketplace if you wanted to have a marketplace of assets in your game when you could just use blockchain? It's already there. You can use it as a marketplace and it makes total sense. So things like that if it's kind of um approached in the right way uh you know crypto shouldn't be a blocker. Anyway, there's there's a large uh long document that goes into the, you know, our objectives, the obstacles, what we're doing, metrics that we're going to be watching that other people ought to be watching in terms of, you know, how fast we're trying to grow on

that front. So, um, that's one of the things that's coming up. Um, and then we also get into more of the kind of crypto audience focused stuff, uh, that comes out with portals on a regular basis. So, new games, we did a big loot box drop um, last year. with uh you know hundreds of thousands of visits to portals where we just aird dropped every single Salana community uh a bunch of portals loot boxes. They can take those NFTts into portals to open the loot boxes and it just brought you know tens of thousands of people into portals uh all at once and was a really fun uh activation. So we're doing more of that you know tie-ins with the portals token. Um we're doing onchain

uh trading that we're rolling out with portals. So you can create a space and if you're let's say part of Pingu or any you know crypto community that that you want to build a space for and set up in-game trading where you can trade you know Pingu or whatever other token you'd like in-game. Um you could do that and you as a creator are able to you know collect fees on on that. Um and uh you know uh we have uh even integrations I won't won't mention the specific ones yet uh but uh with some of the prediction markets uh there's there's integrations where you

know people can jump in and and do prediction market trading in spaces as well. And these are all tools that are available to creators to kind of you know tap into and use. And um yeah, lot lots of things coming on the on the crypto audience side of things as well uh that uh that people are excited about. So that post on our Discord does go into that and we'll get, you know, um that broken down into content that's going to go out on Twitter as well that people can check out. But yeah, lot lot of stuff coming. It's a very very busy exciting exciting time. Yeah, it certainly sounds like you got you got a lot of lot of great stuff coming uh coming down the pipeline and I mean like um like ps on like gamers competing against each other. I think

that would be pretty cool and event right um it's going to be there. >> Um yeah, as we're coming to time uh you mentioned it um what's the best way for people to keep up to date with everything that's going on with portals? Um, you mentioned uh following on on X and uh Discord. Um, uh, how what's the best way for people to get involved? >> Yeah, I would definitely say follow Portals on on X. Uh, hop into the Discord if you have any questions or interested about like creating things in Portal and getting to know the community. We have an absolutely amazing community that's uh uh always willing to help people get up to speed and and learn how to create things on the

platform. uh and just answer any questions about, you know, our long-term plans and mainstream adoption push starting to happen and all that. So, yeah, I'd say yeah, X and Discord are definitely the place to start. >> Excellent. >> Yeah. >> Also, sorry, the portal's website uh the portal.to if you want to jump in and play around with uh uh creating a space u playing some of the games that are out there. So, website is getting kind of a whole refresh where we're highlighting the games and you can jump in and and play them. it is kind of more geared towards that mainstream audience. So, you'll be seeing that. Um, but yeah, portals website, X and Discord are a good place to start.

>> Excellent. And, uh, yeah, we'll have those all linked for you um, in the description of this podcast below. I want to get in a couple of questions uh, that came in late uh, in the crowd uh, from Ty Dev. Uh, first question he has is or she has uh, how can people discover uh, games that are built on uh, portals? >> Yes. So the new website will be highlighting kind of the best games. Um again kind of going into if you were seeing Portal. So that's one one place. Um Tik Tok, Twitch, that is also starting to roll out in terms of streamers that are playing some of the featured games. Uh, and then from there, you know, they'll they'll be sending you

to the Portal's website, um, where you can kind of jump into that game that they're playing, but then also browse other games that are that are available to play, some of the other ones that are upcoming. Um, so yeah, it'll mostly be the the website. Um, Portals X, if you're in the crypto space, will also be a good place to kind of see, you know, what what new stuff is is coming out. >> Good, good stuff. Uh, great question and and great answer. And uh finally uh how for for the content creators out there that are building the games um how how can they make revenue uh off of off their creations?

>> Yeah. So partly there there's a few different ways. One with the crypton natives that are building on the platform um they're often creating things that are more crypto audience focused as well. So we just released those tools where they're able to integrate you know trading in spaces. Um, a lot of folks are and have been building games that are that are more geared towards mainstream audiences without kind of the the crypto stuff. Um, and that's where we've been kind of helping them build up their their audience for those games to be released.

We're also um funding through whether it's game jams or more specific funding for here's a game that we know, you know, there's kind of a hunger for in the market that we'd love to see created. Um and uh you know, here's the budget for it. Here's kind of the timeline that we're expecting. So, we're kind of like a mini game publisher in that in that sense for for these types of games. So we are also internally creating games for this next push uh to be examples of hey you can make a game in portals and it can do millions in revenue. Um that'll start to get you know more more developer attention. Um but game jams are also a really fun cool way to get started where we're we're

doing prizes mostly crypto um native audiences. Um, but we've also been starting to move the game jams into kind of more mainstream, uh, mainstream audiences as well. So, uh, the game jams always have really cool prizes, cash prizes, uh, tokens if they're, you know, on the crypto side. Uh, so that's one way that people have like gotten their start where it's like, I'm just going to, you know, we just did a horror game jam uh, with Atari and Block of Horror and tons of awesome awesome horror themed games were created. Uh, and yeah, we'll be highlighting those. So, check those out on on Portals X. Uh, we'll have a place where you can browse all of those games that were created. Um, so

yeah, if you're interested, the game jam is usually uh a really good place to start. So, more of those are rolling out. >> Uh, yeah. Another question was like when's the next one? >> Yeah. Uh, should be So, we actually have a builder competition this month. Um, so be on the lookout for that and we'll probably have our next more major game jam in in January. >> Amazing. And yeah, uh, unfortunately that that brings us uh to time. Uh, Adam, thank you so much uh again for coming on the show today. Uh, I I thought I thought this was pretty neat and I know uh a lot of people in the crowd probably thought the same. Um, so definitely uh going to keep going to

keep the eyes on uh uh portals uh going going forward here. So, um yeah, uh uh with that I just want to say thank you again. Uh thank you for the audience for joining us today and uh happy Tuesday, happy rest of the week to everybody and uh hope everybody has a great uh Salana Breakpoint. Uh I know that's coming up uh tomorrow and this week. Uh so if you're going there, hope everybody enjoys. Awesome. Appreciate it. >> My pleasure. All right. All have a good one. Cheers.