The X to Mint formula for web3 growth marketing

Transcript

GM GM welcome to another episode of web3 Academy your trusted source for useful and legitimate information to remain on the Forefront of the internet Revolution I'm Jaybird and this is Kyle reedhead and we believe that web3 is going to change the world that's why we're here to guide the world's top talent into this space to contribute get ahead of the curve and capitalize on the opportunity today we're capitalizing on growth Marketing in web3 with t-pen and the X to Mint formula Kai what'd you think about this episode yeah another great episode and I think we brought on some top talent right that's exactly what

t-pan is in the growth world he just brings a different perspective that a lot of people aren't necessarily writing about or speaking about with this idea of the sort of x to Mint which I think is a fairly simple concept to understand but a very useful one for really any business that's looking to either onboard new members into web3 or you know just create experiences for existing members that are in web 3 so it's a really cool model that tthan broke down and he's a great brain in the space and it's nice to bring on we kind of talk about it you know we could probably talk for hours and hours about web3 because all three of us are in marketing but also all three of us are deep down the rabbit hole web three so always great to bring on and others who who are that far down the rabbit hole

totally yeah tpam brings a wealth of knowledge because he's been writing almost five times a week more recently spending to start this year he's only doing it twice a week now but he was writing five times a week for all of 2022 his newsletter so he's got just such a wealth of knowledge is so helpful and he comes also from a background of growth marketing and web 2 he worked in edtech and fintech and ride sharing and so what I love most about t-pan is that he came because there was an opportunity to make money NBA top shots in particular which he will say he did not end up making the amount of money that he thought he was going to make in the beginning but he realized he stayed for everything else because he realized that the financial opportunities is not the

most important use case of web 3D and it's also not the most approachable and that there's so much else here in this space that businesses can use and learn from and so we really dive into more interesting use cases than just when token go up you know what most people come into the space for the financial opportunity but I think what they don't understand is the financial opportunity is not just trying to invest and trade your way through tokens it's by coming into the space building a network building a business gaining a new skill and being ahead of the adoption of technology and that's how you really make money in the space I don't know if people understand that yet but I think tpan has and hopefully our listeners all of you have as well because we do talk about that all the time but we'll give

you some great skills great Insight here in this episode before we get into it though let's take a quick second and hear from our sponsors the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol

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through their Beta release soon and has opened up their waitlist for web3 Academy listeners if you want to stay in the Forefront web3 sign up for segments wait list today with the link in the show notes below shared ownership is a game changer and we want you to be there first t-pen welcome to the show thank you GM thank you both for having me excited to be here excited to share some observation thoughts and here to have a good time hanging out with y'all feel the exact same so let's start off t-pen how did you first fall down the rabbit hole yeah always a fun story to rehash and think about I definitely have a lot of parallels to probably other guests and individuals in the space joining web3 and at the same time a little

different so I'll start with my background professionally I started off doing growth marketing growth related roles in Tech particularly web 2 Tech and marketing related roles started off in Mobile gaming then ride share space I'm based out here in the Bay Area so a lot of different tech companies then went to a variety of different Industries holding these roles in health Tech fintech entertainment Tech and most recently edutek and in my most recent full-time job it was is during covet spend a lot more time at home no surprise there spend a lot more time online and as a result I Think Through the Grapevine of different conversations I had and just poking around different

areas of the internet came across NBA Top Shot you know the classic digital trading cards on the blockchain thanks to Dapper labs and they're definitely you know very well respected and legends in the space in regards to what they've done and also where they've come from and how they've contributed to the space and for me I thought it was a light bulb moment you know just the ability to get closer and the ability to digitally trade on the blockchain these digital Collectibles these trading cards of LeBron James Steph Curry all these basketball players which is clear to me I saw a future where you could be at your local team's basketball game at the arena and you

just get air dropped this one of 1000 Special Top Shot right and that was just so visceral to me combining that with my background and growth in marketing I just saw that click I went super hard I am a stereotypical Diamond hander for better and worse that has created me well and that has also been very painful you can you know still time on Top Shot I'll just put it that way I definitely have a lot less than I used to fun fact I actually I was a strong believer and they hinted at this in different degrees again it's nothing on them but I thought they were going to create for NBA Top Shot they're doing this for some of their other products and unopened packs Marketplace so I actually held like 150 unopened packs like the rarest ones like

the legendary ones to the most basic ones I got in at the early early days of series two so I won't get into details but let's just say it took a very very very very very very long time to open up all the packs it was over 500 moments list them and as the prices drop down d-list re-list d-list relist and you know now it's much more manageable so I have a piece I wrote about that just in regards to some of this light you know pain points I think most people don't interact that way but you know you make decisions and sometimes they don't work out and many times you know in other scenarios they do but what brought me in as you can sort of tell was sort of seeing number go up from a financial standpoint and I got curious and I

joined the space but it quickly became clear to me that I wanted to stay for a lot of other reasons right and the easy way to describe it and many of these are all buzzwords but I have my own 3C framework I created and the three C's are basically Community creators and culture and I think this sort of Paradigm or this new chapter in web3 applications Finance Bitcoin you know that is always going to be sort of the OG use case and arguably the most important but now this sort of new wave of applications from a creator lens from a community lens from a cultural lens is what sort of stood out to me and had turned from wide number go up to Why is there just so much energy outside of just numbers and quantitatively interest

pouring into the space so that's what continued to draw me in like a magnet started to become an early Community member of some other nft focused communities that are definitely still around so that's really great to sort of see them grow throughout I mean that's sort of led me to the broader web3 space obviously digital Collectibles you know consumer facing Brands is one thing there's so much else going on whether it's on the D5 side infraside and again with my background it got to a point where I just started noticing some really interesting stuff you know from a marketing and growth standpoint and all my non-sleeping all my non-waking hours were sort of just on Twitter on Discord getting into Telegram and doing a lot you know definitely a lot more DMS on telegram side nowadays too and like you mentioned a little

different than some folks but I just decided to dive in and what that meant for me was not necessarily building a product or finding a full-time job immediately it was just leaving my full-time job very you know grateful for that situation loved the company I came from and still love them today but I decided to leave full stop and just wanted to do two things the first one much more standard me as many people as possible in this space connecting with great folks like yourselves plenty of other folks Founders Builders marketers and the space and the second thing which is definitely more interesting was to actually just write I've actually wanted to write for probably several years now I have no formal writing background outside of just doing dear diary journal

entries since a young age I started journaling on and off since I was about six seven years old I have those notebooks right under my desk I've shared a snapshot or a screenshot in one of my earlier pieces I think maybe a month or two ago super stupid it's just like oh I'm not mad at my mom today like we went to McDonald's like now I'm sorry it's great to look back on though so good back on and reflect and understand who you were and kind of how you used to think compared to now I love doing it yeah definitely you know a little more advanced today but I think it just helped me and I think it helped me realize that I'm an overthinker right and stereotypically it feels like overthinkers are good writers because it's a great way to put pen on paper

whether it's for yourself whether it's for the public just to share your thoughts share your thinking share your logic and I just didn't find the right topic to write about I've been itching for that and I realized web 3 with my sort of background and lens of growth and marketing was where I wanted to write where I could sort of still Infuse my personal voice my opinions even a little bit of what's going on with me personally where I've been what I'm up to but also have a very strong topic where there's a never ending and you guys know this a never-ending supply of topics news headlines takes opinions you know just known unknowns and conversations to be had and that's where I really started it was more for myself to a large degree but also just sharing my thoughts and I had some hypotheses

about what I wanted to write about how I wanted to write about it and here we are about 10 months later definitely the publication has grown a fair degree it's been fun doing collabs with you guys for example you guys have a great newsletter yourselves I'm in a great brand you're building but also just that leading of course no and I really mean that you know blow smoke in that regard I definitely have a high bar for all of us that are sort of in the marketing and growth space as well as myself in regards to the content that I write and making sure I'm thoughtful about it and we just need more of these pillars of education and sort of Illumination in regards to again going back to my background because it's very very important to me that has led to and maybe we could talk about a little bit

more or we could jump to other topics but as a growth person I think one of the most important things is you know understanding where the action is right and what I mean by that is not necessarily what are the headlines right today is February 21st this will be published at a later date but you know what everyone's talking about is the blur open C sort of the war activity right the war people call activities way too nice it's a war and the reason why I call it that is because I think there's a lot more under the hood and I probably won't you know because so many people are talking about it I prefer to talk about the things that you know people have not turned over those stones yet right and we'll get into some of those topics but I think from a growth lens if

you're trying to understand how you sort of 10x your product it's important to understand what the sort of headlines are of the day blur openc as an example but what are the things people are not talking about what are for example the Degen is doing and if you actually think about it from whether it's a top down or Bottoms Up approach it gets very interesting in terms of where you think about sources of inspiration or where you think about what are you know the small folks doing and what are some interesting things that they're doing that you might actually apply to your own Big Brand your big project you know the conversations you're having because there's a lot of activity and exciting inspiration from there too so really going high going low and going in between and that's what I like to do in regards to my writing it's a great

transition into the growth Focus that you have on web3 which is really why we wanted to bring you on the show today because you do have right back at you incredible newsletter great writer so impressed all the stuff you've been producing tpan but what's so unique about you is you're one of the few that's writing it from that growth lens actually you know I just want to take a pause because I do want to give a shout out to anybody who leaves a paying job to create content Amen to you like that is a big risk that is very hard to do kai you might have an opinion too because I know you feel so strongly about that stuff it's a big risk and your family might think you're crazy t-ben I don't know what your family said about you and you're not at the leap but

the value that you can get from just committing to whether it's writing or it's video or it's audio whatever your content medium is the learnings that come from that so not just tpad not just buying NBA top shots and not just being active in the space but then also writing and taking it to the next step of what's this framework and what's this concept and how do I think about this how do I explain to somebody else is really a huge value that levels you up in ways you would never imagine I think the best way to learn and I also think I love that you said you wanted to focus on two things one is writing the other was networking and I think in web 3 there's no better time to be networking than right now because in five years from now it's gonna be very difficult to

network in this place right now you can go and talk to any founder of any company they're just like yeah sure I'll talk to whoever when you try to talk to the founder of any web 2 company that's not happening you know it is the perfect time to just go all in and do it so I love it yeah I appreciate it I appreciate the shout out and Jay to answer your question in regards to why my parents thought about it I'll just say once I started entering like my background from a growth and marketing standpoint was growth marketing Performance Marketing right it was also in Mobile gaming back in like almost 10 years ago like nine years ago right so when I tried to explain to my parents who are also immigrants for like 30 years ago coming to the US from Asia it

was pretty Limited in regards to what were the most understandably so right like what was a reliable stable sort of career and I you know once I went to do growth marketing which is a very new sort of discipline in a sort of Industry Mobile gaming specifically not just gaming that was just starting off a few years old it was already like extremely hard to explain what I did so ever since that point like almost 10 years ago just being like hey I'm doing this oh I moved to this company I'm doing really similar work now I'm doing slightly different work but more of a leadership level at this company you know that is in edutech but is actually a dance focused company they're like what so once I entered here

and you know hey we're adults you know there's this level of trust and also just you're talking about this with this level of passion we haven't heard about before too and I can tell myself like I could talk about this stuff for hours if I meet someone randomly at the bar or bump into someone at some event and you guys could probably do the same right if we saw each other in real life we're like I only got 10 minutes to chat like and ends up being 30 minutes like oh let me cancel my meeting right like that definitely happens in the space when game recognized game if you know you know or your dinner party and you're that you're going to the corner right it's like you want to talk to yeah I like you find your tragedy guy like you find that one person at the party and

you and then like your fiances or Partners or whatever my fiance would just roll her eyes and but like Loki happy that like I found someone at this party that we're just chatting for the rest of the night and I'm like everyone else is intimidated because they're like okay they're not just having a casual conversation I am not going to approach them right but like we're just having a blast so it's a little bit of that and like there definitely is trust and Consulting advising on the side too but you know long term we'll see where that really takes me and it's really exciting but starting off on the foot that is just not common and I think you know when we talk about content you guys are doing a great job and this is the last bit about content I think well I think is also

sort of underappreciated especially with good content again I don't say it lightly I think you guys are creating great content here in the space and very important is it's a public good right and what we mean by public goods don't need to go down that rabbit a whole lot of different ways to think about it but in web 3 there's that big concept right if you open source code if you provide and create tools like Dune analytics is a public good in a lot of Senses but content is a public good too so from your guys's angle from my angle how can we create public goods that still benefit us don't get me wrong and that's important because there needs to be some level of compensation even if it's not purely just Financial but having the work that we're doing be approached as

public goods and resources that whether you're a newbie especially if the content is for newbies to experts or for me as an example you know growth specific if a case studies Frameworks and examples of what's going on in the space that a lot of interesting people knew old web 2 going into web3 or other builders and Founders are looking for these types of resources that's very underappreciated but also very important to highlight so you know for all the content creators listening in or even if you're thinking about creating content for your business how can you do it in a way that obviously benefits you and what you're doing no doubt if you're getting zero credit or you're not getting what you need from that that's important but really approaching it in a way where you

can truly provide value for others and if you lead with that there's something there right so I think that's very important to highlight and double down on when you do find some of that magic it's really the most simple frame of mind for any new business is just provide value and you don't know where to lead and as a Creator you often don't know where to lead so yeah anybody out there provide value and it'll go to great places okay let's transition into web 3 growth mechanics so you've spent the last 10 months as you said t-pan I think you were writing five times per week in the beginning now I think you've scaled it back a bit because that's crazy and five times for a reason now I think you're at what two times per week

anyways you've been three times a week yep full on for 10 months give us a just an overview of why you decided to focus on Gross mechanics and I should say why you decided to focus on growth and maybe lead into I want to lead into the estimate formula but before we talk y'all specifically about that formula I want to just take an overview of growth in the web 3 space and maybe even you can leave that back to your past experience in marketing growth yeah yeah so I'll start with a little bit of that content text and then leading to why I write about growth in the web 3 space and then yeah we could talk about the estimate formula which has been more of a recent sort of theme in my writing

because I'm starting to see a lot more of those mechanics happening which is cool and really great for the rest of the space to better understand what's going on there but as I've shared it with my background in growth and marketing I think specifically with growth in my opinion one of the skill sets this doesn't have to be for every growth professional because I think there's a lot of different types of growth professionals some are more analytical some are great people leaders some are great strategists some are really good Hands-On whether they're senior Junior doesn't matter just like focusing on execution what I've learned is you know I could do all the above too as a gross individual we were working in that space but also as a leader but what I realized over the years that I'm really good at

was observing pointing out the observations and explaining those observations in a way that makes sense and in a lot of cross-functional collaborative work that I did when I was at full time in various companies that was where I delivered the most magic explaining those complex growth Concepts to all these different people whether you're in data science whether you're on the creative side whether you're in content whether you're a business executive to someone on my team who is more Junior right and seeing that light bulb click so when it translated over to creating content I realized one as I've observed the space during my sort of early days and for the record I actually

was lurking in Twitter and Discord I didn't do anything I didn't publicly tweet I didn't write for 15 months right so that sort of led to me writing five times a week because I just had this waterfall of just pent up sort of content topics that actually allowed me to very naturally and again writing isn't for everyone like everyone has their own medium some people could just do everything some people are just really good at one thing and my home base is writing long for right I'm definitely doing more Twitter threads and stuff like that I gotta do it that's part of the game that's the web 2 growth Playbook right threads yeah and like I fully understand I've said this so many times maybe less publicly like for the record it's ironic that I'm not focusing on like the number of subscribers and

followers but rather like focusing on some degree of like the creative and artistic side of writing as well as bringing my sort of flavor and expertise and and that sort of led to a different type of growth sort of trajectory that is now starting to take off but like it's not like you see that type of growth early in the first couple months right not not even to mention in the first six months but you know as I was thinking about what I'm good at what I enjoyed and like the topic I wanted to write about which is the web 3 space very Broad and then bringing in like my skill sets and my unique point of view I knew I was not going to start writing about headlines right because that is somewhat saturated it still is saturated today not saying you can't be successful

there right there's different ways to achieve that success it's a different type of game you need to play there so to say but I realized that one there was a lack of growth related content out there two I really enjoy that three I have my own personal mode because I have a background that many other folks don't have and we need a lot more both people in the web 3 space thoughtful ones in particular thoughtful everyone in this space has to be more specific and I wanted to test out the hypothesis right like who is actually starting to read the content you know who is sharing and to whom and you know who's actually consistently reading that content so I started taking various data points in my hypotheses I want to write about web3 I want to do

long form via sub stack and I also want to write more specifically about web3 growth and marketing case studies Frameworks things I'm pointing out that other people aren't and I started seeing signs qualitatively and a little more delayed quantitatively showing me that there is a need and a want and a hunger for that content and that I could deliver that value to them and now I'm seeing that manifested in other ways and I know for example you guys are measuring and tracking in different ways too quantitatively so that's how I got into growth so like my background you know testing the hypotheses and seeing that feedback loop that sort of letting me know and letting the space know we need more of this type of content yeah and I love that you said you are very good at seeing something

and then turning it into a concept or a model that is easy to understand so giving it like a name and then explaining it to others and so that's a perfect lead and let's talk about the estimate formula what's the estimate formula I think I'll start off with just the concept of minting and for probably most of the listeners in the space we understand what minting is basically creating and sort of having an asset whether it's nft or something else on the blockchain right I'm intentionally making it very simple probably technically inaccurate so don't quote me I'm not pretending like I'm you know super technically accurate with a lot of my Concepts because comprehendability is very important right so trading off a

little bit of that accuracy for the comprehendability for a larger audience is important here as it stands today typically what you do to Mint something easiest examples nfts you click a few buttons you connect your wallet and actually what happens is when you click mint and it probably costs something at minimum gas class you actually are interacting your wallet is interacting and by extension you are interacting with a smart contract and you are using the mint function and by doing that you create let's say this new nft on the blockchain great that's yours that's yours forever until you decide to do something else with it I don't know what percentage but let's just say 99 or more than 99 of minting interactions function in this way few Mouse clicks boom you

have the thing and what happens there is you have this model you have this formula and let's call it X to Mint in this case it's click to Mint interact to Mint what we're starting to see is other models here and why I'm saying X to Mint is if you treat that input as a variable you actually can do other things in order to Mint let's say an nft and there's a lot of examples over the past weeks and months and there have been many others in the past don't get me wrong but I think it's happening more in mass and I think it's becoming very clear to individuals like myself that are observing a trend happening where you can do other things can you give us

an example of a x to Y formula from web 2 or from previous marketing growth tactics yeah definitely so one that came to mind when I wanted to explain X to Y specifically was actually from my childhood it's a program from you know the serial industry called box pops for education so to explain the tldr of what's going on there that has evolved over time is back in the day let's say a few decades ago on the top of every cereal box or at least I think General Mills there was this little sort of cut out where you can cut out a portion of

the cereal box and there's this little box tops for education I don't remember the exact numbers but if you cut out each one of those General Mills or the cereal company would donate five cents or maybe 25 cents to educational initiatives and non-profit organizations to push education which is super important so if we were to use that X to Y formula what you were doing is you were cutting to donate right bear with me right that sounds a little crazy but that actually sort of fits that formula right you're doing something to get an outcome and it feels good you're basically donating by cutting up a portion of a box that you already bought to eat cereal with right

so what does the 2023 version of that look like today first of all Box Tops for Education still exists today right you aren't cutting the Box anymore right we're in sort of the modern era right much more digital but what you do is you scan the barcode now but the outcome is the same when you scan the barcode you download an app or you submit it that gets counted on the serial company's side and then they donate it and so that's a win all around that's a win for the non-profits that's a win for the serial company right they're doing good stuff and that's a win for the consumer because they're feeling good they're giving back that is scan to donate so we just talked about

let's say cut and like mail to donate let's say now it's scan to donate so if you sort of Port that over instead of donating your minting and then there's a lot more examples and let's dive into the other examples because I know we have want to talk about plataments scandam textament speak to Mint and maybe burned a bit as well but where this goes is what is growth growth is all about can you grab attention and in order to grab attention you need to have fun engaging informative you need to give value as you said before and just clicking isn't grabbing attention all the time also clicking right now on web3 is a very challenging ux and it's dangerous so yes yeah so there's also

that side of it too but I think a lot of these examples the reason this formula that you're coming up with is so effective is because we are in an attention economy and these things grab attention before we get into I just want to add one thing you said Jay like this was a really possible web too and like it is possum web too you can scan to do anything in web 2 and click to do anything web 2. the difference here and why minting is so important is that the thing you get like you guys said you own it which means that whatever you've scanned or clicked or whatever to then get you can now take it and have experiences outside of just the company that your you know just the websites or the account or whatever it is that you got it on in the web 2 world you're

stuck right air miles or something I earned my air miles I can only use it there with with air miles in web 3 the thing that I'm minting is what goes here you own this thing and now you can go interact with anything and I can create experiences on any metaverse or on any website or on any whatever I want that's the beauty of minting rather than I don't know what we call it the web 2 but whatever that was so anyway just wanted to clear that up Kyle I think that's actually a great point because I want to go back to the Box Tops piece right and I think one of the things you're alluding to is like better understanding your customer I'm not saying in a creepy you know meta or like purely we want to send you more ads way and like hey

that's inevitable to a degree that'll come but we're not there yet fortunately and like I hopefully there's more and more thoughtfulness put into that but like let's talk about like in the 90s or the early 2000s Box Tops let's go back there what happens you mail the Box Tops and then you know General Mills as an example knows that okay there's someone that is like a you know not only buying our cereal boxes or like maybe they're just going through the dumpster and like you know cutting up these boxes but like we know that they're a consumer very likely right maybe we can mail them coupons if we want or like show them our things that's more or less and you know their physical address we have their address then what does it look like now if you scan okay well we probably know their email you know you can better

understand the frequency you could see okay well this barcode actually means that this is Cheerios right they just eat like 10 boxes of Cheerios a week like I don't know if they have like 100 kids or something but like they eat a lot of Cheerios right and then you could start like better understanding your consumer build a deeper relationship that way right like clearly they care about donating clearly they really like Cheerios and clearly they are Die Hard supporters of this box tops non-profit initiative that's awesome right so what does it look like if you have a stronger interactive model but also one where you could better understand your consumer you're breaking those barriers you could see okay well they're actually doing other not only do they like the General Mills nft but they like all serial nfts like what does that mean you know

they're just scouring the internet and like web3 and they really like that oh they're really big like consumer goods fans that's actually what it is it's not just cereal I'll stop myself from going down that rabbit hole but I think Kyle that's also what you're alluding to right there's a much richer sort of extra Dimension added to that relationship right not just data that too but also the relationship with the consumer so all right hey where were we let's do plate a mint let's so we got plated Tech cement speak to Mint let's let's yes so with a formula yeah we're sticking with mint for now but I think that hopefully enriches the formula in which eventually we could probably talk about in a bit you know it's more than potentially just minting but in this

case with the formula we're going to talk about X to Mint right so starting with platamint a very great recent example of this is dookie Dash by Yuga Labs board Apache Club they just recently over the past couple weeks closed the sort of mini game that they had dookie Dash and also announced the official winners of it super cool Pro gamer one at all gotta be crazy I think this is really interesting right again like sort of just my sort of gross mind and also poking into details what they positioned this as very consistently was they called it a skill based mint what I found interesting and probably intentionally so was the web 3 audience they were catering to and their holders

understood it was play toment it was a game and in order to you know by playing the game then you were eligible for the next phase of their big sort of activation for like a better word but if we're to abstract that just a little bit it's basically played a minute you need to play the game in order to Mint that next phase of this campaign you couldn't just hold a sewer pass right that's very important to take note of you had to actually interact with what was going on if you had zero like one point let's say or a million points it doesn't matter you needed to play to Mid and they were being more specific based on your score that impacted the outcome of the mint which is why they honed in on that a little bit but that's very interesting

right how many off the top of our heads I think it's somewhat limited right now I think in the next year in the coming years and even months we're going to see a lot more of this but this is an example of play to Mint right very rudimentary they could have which they had done so far their playbook was just airdrop right yeah so and they did airdrop the sewer pass to board ABR clubholders within Kennel Club mutant ninja club or did y'all come depending upon what you had you got a different tier of a sewer pass they could have just airdropped it and been done so why not do that well that doesn't grab attention that doesn't amplify content that doesn't get new people talking about you in the same way

whereas in this case they created this game did you get a superpass t-pen neither collar I did so we're we speculate oh and play the game yeah yeah so I got one let's just say I was focused on profit taking so I just sold it explodes all just out there uh yeah sure that's the one cabinet out of this played him in it was actually technically bi to play to Mint right like no one could just actually play to Mint yeah whereas I think where this goes more mainstream and the reason that you play is because it creates an experience so you get familiar with the

brand you have you're actually creating experience for these people to Mid whatever the heck the thing is but if it's free to play to Mint it's here's now a no barrier entry point into someone interacting with your brand and your business and maybe it's a education type of play or their step-in which did like uh get you know walked him into kind of thing which is still play to Mint technically but it's actually something healthy so it's like it's create an experience and then rather than just air dropping like you said which I think is great it's just yeah Hugo Labs made you buy I don't know how much that thing costs but it wasn't cheap yeah I don't know what it is today but I think before the game closed at its peak it was about 2 to 2.5 eth so maybe around four thousand dollars at

the time before it closed and there were fluctuations during throughout scores that were deemed cheating you know had a score of zero et cetera et cetera so definitely a lot of interesting action on that front and Kyle you just mentioned walk to Mint right with step in or walk to earn play to earn right that's another example of that formula where the sort of second variable is earn and I know there's some hesitancy these days about you know anything to earn but it's important to understand that sort of framework and model exists and that's another example and I think earning is fine but of course there's going to be a lot more robust mechanics in the future in regards to what that really means or they're changing it to play and earn right that's not necessarily always the end goal you know

sometimes it's a wording thing right so with dookie Dash and Yuga labs and what they've done played them in is a great example of a very large prominent one where they're sort of changing some aspects of what it means to actually mint but you really need to participate in their way to participate in the next step and you come into their story which I think gets you more involved because then you're more interested which is why playing is good the challenge with play to Mint if you're a business and you're looking at this and thinking should I do play them in that's a heavier lift let's go to the next one scandamid which is probably the easiest and the lightest left for a business to do and we already talked about scanning as an action with

the Box Tops example and very relevant to this space today and one very prominent example one that's much lesser known example I've written about both was planning to write both in one piece but the first one just took so much time and space and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole so it was what I called it was a tale of two QR codes right and in short you're scanning these QR codes so the first one is with limit break and digidai Goku for anyone that you know is more up to date on all the happenings during the Super Bowl the company limit break they are a web 3 gaming company they've raised over 200 million dollars in Venture Capital funding um the founders and many people at the

company they come from the mobile gaming space so I'm aware of sort of a little bit more of the background of the team particularly the founder they did a scan to Mint Super Bowl ad that cost six and a half million dollars objectively an overall terrible ad I won't get into the details you could Google it Kyle what are you doing about the ad now I'm gonna say it again now I'm going to go on that right yeah you're not going to go on that ran okay well there's plenty more from where that came from if I just Google or go on Twitter so no shortage there but what I wanted to highlight out was the scanning right you had to scan that QR code and basically after a couple minutes or you know for some people even sooner like that was gone it just led to uh the

CEO's Twitter page other thoughts about that cool we won't get into it but the point is it will scan to Mint on the big biggest live TV stage in the U.S and that's pretty notable in regards to just people understanding that you can scan something on TV and to be clear this was for nft or web3 related effort but they were actually multiple other commercials that had QR codes too so scanning first of all is an action that's becoming much more commonplace bus stop ads on traffic posts right you just see other things where you just scan the thing if you want to you know contact whoever it is posting on that post to TV ads like what we're seeing today much more commonplace

so in this case it's scan to Mint on the biggest live TV stage in the US the Super Bowl and I think for certain in a lot of aspects for limit break that was a success because one of their goals was a stress test like what if there were hundreds of thousands or maybe potentially who knows what the real number is millions of people trying to scan nothing at the same time and you know from what we can tell like their system stems and their back end held up so that's actually very interesting and what's applicable for other folks is understanding one you know does this even work two we'll see if limit break does this and this is one of the arguments I make in the piece but with a QR code what if you just change the QR code and do a TV campaign across

different shows across different countries you know late night TV versus you know during the daytime soap operas like how can you again in terms of better understand your consumer see who scans you know when do they scan do they create a wallet because of it do they already have an existing wallet Etc how do they create a campaign that sort of maybe sticks or becomes much more than let's say what a lot of people think six and a half million dollars sort of burnt in the corner of the room the thing that I really get about the ad is like you said their stress test and yes what they they didn't need to stress test as a QR code work we already know that that works with Millions coinbase did it last year and actually a bunched it in the Super Bowl last year right so it's like

that's just a web 2 Tech that's it's easy it works there was no I don't think they had any concern that scanning was a new problem it's if 100 million people scanned and wanted to admit something that's the thing we need to stress to us because that's the big problem exactly they didn't end up stress testing that because they rugged everyone and tweeted about it before the ad one even went live so like I don't even know that they got to stress test that but that would have been nice if it was like an open Mint for anyone instead of only minting like 4 000 something at that time if they would just let me unlimited amount then they could have really stressed us and that would onward a lot of people I think yeah and this is where I definitely speculation we'll see what

happens we'll see if they even do any more otherwise it really is just like a one-time six and a half million dollar Super Bowl ad which hey they raised 200 mil some very very smart people in the space a lot of conviction you know I'm not there so I can't judge at least to a degree but they did force people who wanted to Mint to connect their wallet and if they really wanted to do that they would have just removed that and there's a lot of different tools especially today and many more to come that sort of remove all those barriers you just put in your email creates a wallet so I'm encouraged to believe that they are aware of that product decision and they intentionally did not or they sort of gated it in a way for their web3 native audience but

totally agree with you Kyle 100 if we play this out where this scan to Mint formula will really work is in gaming where it's scan something to Mint something for free to Mint a player in a game or an item in a game that is probably a semi-fungible token it's probably ERC 1155 as opposed to a one of one 721 you get that and there's a hundred thousand of that particular item but because you have that that you now own it and by scanning the journey tells you hey you own this item and now because you own this item you can play this game and by playing this yada yada yada could lead to you making money or

to earn or whatever and that's what limit break is testing is this the entry point to get you know you came from Mobile gaming tpan you want millions of users playing your game what's the way to do that in web3 I totally agree in regards to better expanding user acquisition sort of tactics and strategies in that regards and again I go back to better understanding your user on a deeper level I'm building a stronger relationship there I just want to add one more thing I think outside of games though there's also scan to minta Soul bound nft is where I think this thing really takes off because the reason you don't use the URL is because you can share the URL to others scanning means you actually have to be present there pull out your phone and scan it and so if you want a proof of location

proof of attending of an event all these kind of things the one problem with all our Pro apps right now is like it's a to try to figure out how to get these in the right hands but if you just use a scan feature scan and then boom you get a automatically in your wallet that proves you were at X event X concert X whatever well now this is a perfect way to start bringing your audience on chain and like you said T-Pain now you have all this other data to understand who your audience was that was driving on this highway or that came to this conference or that came to this concert Etc and so I think it's these scan to minted nft that can't be traded is good where you can like start to onboard the masses and gain some really really cool data and that's a really

really great point from the soul bound aspect and from a geolocation standpoint yes you can send URLs you could even spoof your location there are definitely layers that you can add to this and we are simplifying the X to Y scan to Mint or whatever you sort of fit into that formula on the back end in terms of sort of the general framework you could think about it as scantum in but then you would actually add on to the sort of formula that I'm talking about in regards to okay what are the supporting layers to validate qualification from a security aspect how do you sort of think about it that's expanding down in regards to the other layers of enabling that campaign or that effort specifically right what are the

requirements from a technical standpoint what are the requirements or needs or wants from a security standpoint what are the requirements from a targeting standpoint and like where these pop up from a channel perspective TV only everyone's going to be at home supposedly when that comes up or Travelers right at the airport right what does it mean to scan something scan to Mint right or if it's a soul bound let's say Amex Centurion Lounge that's you know that I could see maybe something going on there as an example I do want to talk about codes really quick because this is definitely one of those examples of not many people know about it but there's some very interesting things going on there in terms of scan to Mint or rather you know scanning as an interaction model so basically this is the project from a popular tick

tocker four million followers his name is Jason kleim he got interested in the sort of web 3 nft space for some time now he actually doesn't have a lot of followers on Twitter which is where oftentimes a lot of the web 3 and nft action is and he has created you know project or two in the past more sort of meme-esque or for fun and this one as well it's called codes however the concept focuses on a QR code as the nft it was an open Edition mint sort of following the open Edition meta and I think 2500 plus or minus of these QR codes were minted and that's what it is straight up a QR code and when you scan the QR code it takes

you to a destination what got really interesting very quickly is one as a content creator Jason has created a lot of other interesting examples to prove this point of sort of one static image leading to infinite possibilities or infinite destinations I would argue it's actually a dynamic image leading to infinite possibilities with the way I think about it but basically in the span of about a week maybe a little over a week now he has taken his scanners particularly his holders but it could technically be anyone that could scan it right this is public it's on the blockchain ETC he has taken users to 50 Starbucks gift card right whoever redeems it first gets it right and that was public people were complaining you

know his holders were complaining it has taken users to a token gated page you had to hold two or more a token gated page of like 10 gift cards right Chipotle door Dash Starbucks Etc and that was for holders right it wasn't publicly available he has taken and on Valentine's Day scanners and he updated the metadata for it to be like this sort of like heart framed QR code to Nat King Cole song Love right L is the way you look at any right he took him yeah I'm not like it's singing but I'm just like talking and like talking really fast about all these examples of it slowly I'm trying to insert a singing example but he took them to this YouTube video but yesterday he took scanners to

my sub stack piece about codes it gets very interesting when you think about scanning and in the future he's made it very clear he wants it to be like you could scan and take the scanners to a landing page where you can mint something right whether it's sort of an open Mint or it's for a token gated for holders this is a very interesting interaction model where it's actually scanned to why where y could be scanned to go to a landing page scan to receive a prize scan to read a piece of content or interact with a piece of content or scan to Mint as well but because it's a QR code it gets extremely Dynamic versus sort of single dimensional in regards to what that QR code is I think that has some magic in it too when you think

about it if you're a brand project in the space in regards to what QR codes can do and it his is you know what nft the QR code itself doesn't have to be an nft but that's sort of an extension of an interesting Concept in regards to the X to minta framer my first thought there I was like Kai we should write a piece about codes maybe he'll drive traffic okay let's talk about text to Mint and speak to Mint because these are two that I don't think most people have interacted with or heard of as much as the first two and they're a little more I think fun these examples so tell us what has been done here and then we can break them down yes so this text and speak to men Concepts came from an

artist a developer in the space named pretty blocks at p-r-e-t-t-y-b-l-o-c-k-s just giving them credit he's the Creator on Twitter and this sort of came more from the Degen side or like people who are very focused on finding interesting things and just hopefully sell it buying and selling for a profit and this was service in one of the groups that I was a part part of and it was a text to Mint functionality the project was called hacker Haiku so you had to text a number you could text that number anything you want and that number would reply with a link to Mint the hacker Haiku project so pretty straightforward you text a number to

receive a link to mint.hacker Haiku project so it definitely sort of made it circles you know it got a lot of interest so to slowed down and what I thought was the first one and done right cool concept that was notable to me just because I personally hadn't really seen that before although that has existed in other shapes and forms definitely in the past this is not the first but this is the first sort of fun one I've come across of and really seen minting and mass hopefully for the folks that did participate financial gain and then I think about a week later the same Creator pretty blocks dropped another action using speak to Mint and this collection was called please bro right

so this is playing upon the culture in web3 if you understand it pretty funny actually and this played off of The Testament concept that was already created with hacker haikus but in short you actually had to speak and connect your mic to the website and recite and repeat this paragraph and I'll I've got it up here you want to read it out okay please bro I really need to admit this project I understand that this is just a fun art project I understand that I am not entitled to gains I accept any potential risks that come with trying to Mint this project so for those that are familiar with the space this plays Upon

A lot of the sort of activity and the space is one way to put it a lot of the degeneracy more specifically so there's some memes Incorporated in that and the culture for those less familiar I mean in to a degree this is actually sort of like a disclaimer for like a better word right like this is just an art project this is just for fun in short right there are risks involved because you might be paying a certain amount and you might be trying to expect something from that but I think more you know going back to the point of this this is speak to Mint right you had to actually allow microphone access the on the receiving end with what was created they had to identify that you were saying the things that it wanted you to say but what was

fun as well and this is like sort of Connecting the Dots here is what gets minted is actually a product of the previous hacker Haiku output so basically pretty blocks sort of mash together elements of the text messages of the hacker Haiku and that was what was minted so as an example and they're definitely more let's say not safe for work versions of this but the one that I sort of screenshotted in the piece was like okay and basically this piece that was minted from the speak to Mint effort was New York art you are hot boom Bad come on bro please code code try Bruh Bruh Bruh Bruh Yo Gabba Gabba something so again if you if you get it you get it and it's probably very confusing but

again these are elements of what was texted in the first hacker Haiku sort of mint project so specifically pretty blocks is Connecting the Dots here but also making fun with the speak to Mint please bro collection there's a couple things that I like with this one it actually gets rid of a lot of bots I think and people from like spammers trying to Mint because they have to take a human I mean I guess you could probably code in a bot to text or to even speak now but it's much harder so I think that's really great the other thing that's really cool about this is a lot of web 3 of course it was one of your three things you said at the beginning is is community and especially in the nft space we have so many community-based nfts and what I can see

with the speak to Mint thing that's really interesting is if you're trying to build community you typically have ethos around that community and so rather to study anyone buy your nft or you know get your nft make them say the ethos first make them like get a bit of understanding it's almost like when you minted the op token for optimism they had you go through this like sort of something like a quiz where you had to like kind of go through these pages to read them you had to answer correctly to show that you understood what these tokens meant and what it means to the optimism community and it was like a way to sort of rally the troops and I feel like this kind of accomplishes a similar thing which is actually a really cool engagement tool and even it's the tool to keep the community more engaged and

like keep them around right retention tool is what I'm trying to say I actually like that then I also just thought of as you said that the speak to Mint thing is at what point does someone get married using speak to Mint when they say that they're I do like they're I do and then all of a sudden it's the certificate on the Chain yeah it's gonna happen I guarantee it oh no I mean definitely don't want to think about it but if it doesn't work out then what but let's get married first on the Chain that's a different type of vowel right an N of T so you could you could sell it there you go yeah that's just more examples of interesting interaction models where hey like again we understand the concept of you know playing a game you know that's

definitely a very large moment in the space then there was scanning something that a lot of people whether your web 2 web 3 doesn't matter understand that concept and just adding on like well you could scant them in too it takes you to a certain landing page or a minting page and now this is getting a little further along where you know how many examples of texting are speaking to men are there very very few at least in terms of definitely zero in mainstream for now right and Kyle brings up a good point of how this sort of engages the community more and other versions of that in different ways where you know you can take quizzes educate to Mint right like or retention of information to Mint and there's a lot of different ways to

validate that somewhat reliably at least right and for those that really do care they actually are happy that they got to meant the thing but also they learned along the way so lots of interesting takeaways and the point here is there's so many interaction models another one that is starting to emerge and different ways actually in mainstream within web3 and also in other unique ways but pre-mint as an easy example right instead of minting but having a chance to Mint more specifically you might need to follow people on Twitter you might need to like and retweet a tweet you might need to have proof of funds to be allow listed to Mint as an example right you need to have a minimum balance in a

wallet these are all sort of different ways to show interaction to get to that next step whether it's minting or even before that or after that so I think that's very important to think about especially as you apply the sort of formula that allows you to realize hey it could be as simple as scantament they could be much more complex and modular in regards to the goals and the interactions that you want to implement in that type of Journey that you provide well and I think that's where it gets really exciting to think about five years from now 10 years from now what businesses are often trying to do or any organic organization we're trying to get

people to take an action to receive a result whether it be purchasing a product or whether it be receiving a marriage license or whatever it might be and when we have more people on chain with wallets in the metaverse completing different things then oh because you attended this event well now you can attend this event or because you completed this course or you learned this skill now you can level up to this skill and because of blockchain we can immutably prove that you actually did the first steps exactly move on to the second step when you think about the interoperability of all this it gets so exciting and you can do it

permissionlessly so you want to invite a bunch of people to your event well you could pick which communities you want to invite to your event and just say hey these smart contract addresses if you own one token within it great then you can access our event or you can access our mint there's just so many layers that I think get so exciting down the road Titan I don't know if you think Future Ford like that yes I do actually one that's very related to present and current events so again the war between blur and open seat there's a lot of things going on a lot of smart folks were have been talking about that this was going to happen for some time now right and now the question is what is next specifically for creators right because like this was a big reason as to

you know the ability to earn royalties in a pretty reliable way at least what was initially thought this is why they came to the space right and participated and created and got really excited and now that a lot of that's been taken away you know we're talking about and what we've been talking more about is more sort of a very X to Y again scantum and testament even in pre-mint hold a certain amount of you know crypto in your wallet to qualify hopefully for an allow list and this is where I want to continue to emphasize where you can add layers to this and again understanding the framework and the formula is the first piece but what you layer on gets very exciting so why I brought up I'm going back to the open C so the blur situation is you could hypothetically and you could again if you have the

right people and you think and you sort of build this in the right way you could actually see let's say for those that you want to determine qualifications for an allowed list maybe you want to have filters for this needs to be an active wallet that has done a certain amount of activity in terms of purchasing and also selling nfts on open Seer blur or whatever marketplaces and they have actually paid royalties if they don't pay royalties they don't get to participate in the next mint in the next airdrop they don't get an allow list for the next thing that this brand is partnering with another web3 brand on and then it turns into qualify to Mint and then what are the qualifications the

qualifications could be you need to also text but also from a sort of like a history of interaction models that you've had you need to have you know had ninety percent or more of your selling transactions that have paid the actual royalty for whatever you're selling or maybe for a specific collection all your transactions if you were selling they need to actually have paid royalties you know for that collection to qualify for that next collection that's coming out art digital collectible whatever it is so I think it's going to be very interesting when you think about that and expand about that in terms of the future in that regard so excited to see a lot of solutions that definitely sucks today in that specific regard but I

think when you expand that forward thinking and also hey these are creators you're up against they're like that are facing a problem what are they going to do to solve the problem they create you know what else are they going to do so if that's sort of interesting to think about in terms of future formats of this 100 I totally agree okay let's uh move on to a speed round but before we do t-pan want to give you a chance to give a little shill for your sub stack and maybe your writing community if you have your own Community as you said before the 3C is so important tell us a little bit about that and where people can find and follow you online cool yeah if you want to learn more about the work that I've done or just learn more about marketing and growth in web3 check out

my sub stack I write twice a week Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm starting to share this more as a fun fact but actually basically write live so I do have a Content calendar a very rough and lightweight on my side when I do publish I actually publish that live it's definitely not normal it's a happy accident when I talk about writing and doing that live basically more or less but tpan tpan.substack.com my Twitter is tpan tpan underscore web3 clearly I'm bought in my handle on Twitter has web3 in it so that's what it's focused on at least for the medium long term for now and yeah I have a writing Community called write web3 it's at on Twitter at right web3 we're basically a group of writers

in the web3 space diverse backgrounds diverse ways of contributing to the web 3 space through writing it's definitely a labor of love I onboard every member manually and we're about a group of 50 people strong so that's really fun in regards to the energy the diversity and also just the different sort of ideas flying back and forth in regards to our content and whatever yeah about right web3 is the line is Oh it War but we are at war with writing in the web 3 space yes for sure we call ourselves ww3 so we hate World War don't want that hope that never happens but we're at war with poor writing in Webster awesome quick speed round couple questions coming at you t-pan what's an nft you'll never sell

so for those that know me online I have a cool cat not super rare nothing crazy has Apple Head as heart eyes I wasn't actually thinking about it too much when I first got that and made that my profile picture online on Twitter in particular also the mascot for sort of my web 3 with tpan publication would never sell it because it's part of my personal brand now to be honest I think there might be some edge cases where I would eventually change that if that ever were to happen I would never say forever I would say but I would say that I would never sell that because that was my first instance of really understanding and having the light bulb moment of community on my side I think Cool Cats is still today a very strong Community not the highest floor price

would definitely admit that openly but I think there's Good Vibes in short and also just really good people that are part of that sort of community and brand shout out yeah cool cat's a great project okay favorite person to follow on Twitter there are a couple of punks that I really like and follow and they have epic content I wouldn't be surprised if other people have shouted them out before punk6529 legend in the space started from you know his epic threads and he's really good at analogies in terms of educating his audience and explaining Concepts through analogies I love doing that too so he slowed down a little bit on that front but has also contributed to the broader space through his open metaverse project and also his memes project and

collection collaborating with artists so really big fan of sort of digital art nft art crypto art so patron of the Arts on that front and then Punk 9059 if I'm not mistaken but nft statistics Sam is his name he's part of the proof team has an analytics background and he just highlights a lot of interesting quantitative First Data first sort of insights about the space so in his world I think there's some parallels with that and what I do in my side and you know highlighting case studies on the growth side you know Frameworks and for him he points out a lot of the analytics of what's going on in the space I'm making insights and pointing them out to the broader community so I'd say those two are really cool because of their more

unique angles and how they've really built up an audience and really provided value to the broader space big fans of both of them okay last question if you had a billboard that 1 billion people were going to see what would you write on it so we actually did this before we started recording but breathe actually it's not for web 3 it's not for you know any particular goal but it's important to just stop and breathe and like consciously just be present and I can always do better on that front I think many of us can really just take note of where you are who you are in that moment in time and I think that's just such a simple message that we all need more of and need to do more of so nothing to do with web3 but I think we just need to

breathe stop and breathe I thought it was going to be a QR code but all right [Laughter] and then with the QR code like web free project or something with a QR code to Mint a meditation that you have to prove that you completed in order to receive yeah anyways yeah bring it to me could be more on that note thanks for listening today everybody take a deep breath wherever you are whatever you're doing hope you have a fabulous day tpan thanks for joining us again thank you guys thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and

web 3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one