Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wi Joe. I feel
Speaker 1: like we may have had this conversation before, but, um,
Speaker 1: did you ever play Magic the Gathering growing up? No?
Speaker 1: I never did, And I kind of think it's weird
Speaker 1: because maybe I'm like the type of person who would
Speaker 1: have you were right. You did, right, Yeah I did.
Speaker 1: But so I can see you sort of being interested
Speaker 1: in it from a like Poker slash Mats perspective, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have been. I should have been. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was more into it from a collecting perspective. I mean
Speaker 1: I did play, but for me, like, I just liked
Speaker 1: collecting all the cards. But the reason I bring it
Speaker 1: up is because one of the interesting things about Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering was there was this whole ecosystem built around
Speaker 1: this card collecting card playing game, and the company that
Speaker 1: ran it was called Wizards of the Coast, and every
Speaker 1: once in a while they would encounter major problems where
Speaker 1: you know, the price of cards would suddenly get out
Speaker 1: of whack, or the game wasn't as much fun to
Speaker 1: play because they've released a bunch of cards that had
Speaker 1: like special powers and things like that, and then they
Speaker 1: had to figure out ways to fix the entire system
Speaker 1: um and it was really interesting to sort of see
Speaker 1: them do it and managed to. I guess they sort
Speaker 1: of managed to avoid the fate that has overtaken so
Speaker 1: many fads over the years, like think about beanie babies, right,
Speaker 1: those are the classic example. But like magic, the gathering
Speaker 1: has been going for years and they managed to keep
Speaker 1: the system going totally and people are still really into
Speaker 1: it and somehow, you know, even in people are still
Speaker 1: playing it, And I think you make you make a
Speaker 1: really good point, which is that they've kept successful despite
Speaker 1: the fact that there is clearly a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: in car like one could imagine a scenario in which
Speaker 1: people are just in the cards for like the monetary aspect,
Speaker 1: and then the gameplay sort of falls off because maybe
Speaker 1: they get too expensive or whatever. But somehow they seem
Speaker 1: to have strunk fine balance where yes, people pay a
Speaker 1: lot for cards, and in fact, I think like recently
Speaker 1: they're like some record cards even like just in the
Speaker 1: last like several weeks or months, but the game itself
Speaker 1: is still played enthusiastically by a lot of people. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's a really good way of putting it. So, um,
Speaker 1: the reason I bring it up is not because we
Speaker 1: were going to be talking about Magic the Gathering specifically
Speaker 1: we should at some point, Yeah, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: I would love to do that episode, but because we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a sort of brand new game
Speaker 1: that gives me a lot of flashbacks to Magic. But
Speaker 1: it's very much a new game in the sense that
Speaker 1: it is it sort of brings together everything in the
Speaker 1: world of crypto, like cryptocurrencies and f t s, non
Speaker 1: fungible tokens, blockchain. It brings them altogether in the metaverse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly into one ecosystem and it's just exploded in popularity
Speaker 1: in not recent years, right, And you know, I'll let
Speaker 1: you do the proper intro. But one thing, just going
Speaker 1: back to Magic real quickly before we move on. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things with Magic is like
Speaker 1: you own your cards, right, you own your debt, and
Speaker 1: with typical games online, you don't. You know, you think
Speaker 1: about something, I don't know a game that people play,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to sound boomers, so I
Speaker 1: like World of Warcraft. I don't know if anyone still
Speaker 1: plays it. Whatever, it's like you don't really own your
Speaker 1: character in the traditional sense, like you log into your character,
Speaker 1: but it's not yours. And so with this idea of
Speaker 1: like crypto gaming and really it's crypto in general, and
Speaker 1: and of teas in general, et cetera, is this bridging
Speaker 1: of the notion of ownership that this is a thing,
Speaker 1: whether it's a character, whether it's token or whatever, it's
Speaker 1: yours and you and move it from one environment to
Speaker 1: the next. And so kind of like magic, you own
Speaker 1: your card. In this world of crypto gaming, there's this
Speaker 1: sense of ownership that hasn't existed in online or video
Speaker 1: gaming previously, right, And of course you can make money
Speaker 1: from that ownership as well. So if you earn, you know,
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency in this gaming system, you can take it to
Speaker 1: a crypto exchange and convert it into something else. So
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we should just get on with it, because
Speaker 1: we do have tons to talk about. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about Axie Infinity. Um, you might have heard of
Speaker 1: it already. We have Alexander Leonard. He's the CEO and
Speaker 1: co founder of Skymavis and axiuh and he's been kind
Speaker 1: enough to come on the show. So Alex, Welcome to
Speaker 1: a thought. Thanks. Basically, I'm I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1: I love the intro, by the way, as as a
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering player for over twenty years myself, definitely
Speaker 1: to what's happening here. I definitely love that equalsystem and
Speaker 1: how it evolves so well. So maybe just as an
Speaker 1: intro you can kind of describe axe Um for anyone
Speaker 1: who isn't familiar with it. I mean, we sort of
Speaker 1: touched on it, but it is kind of unique in
Speaker 1: the sense that it brings together all these different aspects
Speaker 1: of the crypto world, but it also brings together some
Speaker 1: things we've seen before. But you know, social networks and
Speaker 1: this idea of like creating an ecosystem that very much
Speaker 1: looks like a kind of contained economy. Yeah, sure that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is so much to unpack here. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of what you guys mentioned, I mean,
Speaker 1: the buzzwords are what drives attention to to the product.
Speaker 1: But at a very high level, what we're making here
Speaker 1: is is just a fun game using your ax digital
Speaker 1: pet characters that then can be used in many, many
Speaker 1: different games. Now, some of those games are the ones
Speaker 1: that we as a team create so the one that's
Speaker 1: most popular right now, it's it's the Battle game, where
Speaker 1: you have your team of three Axi game characters and
Speaker 1: you play against other players who also have a team
Speaker 1: of of act game characters. And then there are many
Speaker 1: other kind of sub games or different things that you
Speaker 1: can use them for, such as Breeding of Actions, which
Speaker 1: is another game. And then more games are coming such
Speaker 1: as in All the Land or Kingdom based game, which
Speaker 1: is more on that metadverse side. What we see is
Speaker 1: that or the way that we've structured is that all
Speaker 1: these games are connected. So the main characters that you have,
Speaker 1: they travel across all of these different games, and that
Speaker 1: again gives them more value, higher collectibility, and also more utility.
Speaker 1: And it's been you know, almost four years since we
Speaker 1: started now, so it's it's interesting to see that the
Speaker 1: world has kind of caught up to our vision. And
Speaker 1: now of course we're probably a product cycle ahead of
Speaker 1: pretty much all of our competitors, so very unique, and
Speaker 1: that's also why we have all of these players who
Speaker 1: are coming in, you know, right now, over two million
Speaker 1: daily active players, even though they can't they can't get
Speaker 1: the application on any app stores like they have two sideloaded,
Speaker 1: they have to go get there. Well, that's biocrypto stuff.
Speaker 1: It's very high, a very high barrier to entry still,
Speaker 1: but what we see is that the benefit that we're
Speaker 1: enabling for these users in terms of true ownership and
Speaker 1: in terms of you know what they can actually use
Speaker 1: the game characters for, it's so unique that it has
Speaker 1: never really existed in the same way before, because we're
Speaker 1: combining all of the facets of new technology with some
Speaker 1: you know, a nice game design from the past, and
Speaker 1: then again making a quite a large ecosystem. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the economics. There's seem
Speaker 1: there's multiple assets, right, so the axes that one owns,
Speaker 1: the three characters that you buy for battles, etcetera. Those
Speaker 1: I guess are like n f T s and I
Speaker 1: think people like by potion and that adds its own token.
Speaker 1: Why do you talk to us a little bit about this?
Speaker 1: And it's all going up like crazy, like I think
Speaker 1: this year, like if you were if you were playing
Speaker 1: actually last year, everything's up like two hundredfold or some
Speaker 1: incredible amount due to the rush of in game But
Speaker 1: why do you talk to us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the sort of like the ownable assets that exist
Speaker 1: in game and how they interact. Sure, I mean, so
Speaker 1: when we look at when we look at as the
Speaker 1: first step that you know, people see as the Axecute
Speaker 1: game character. Each of those characters are unique, so they
Speaker 1: are defined as n f T s and they can
Speaker 1: be used across different games, and you need three to
Speaker 1: play the game, as I said, And when you're playing
Speaker 1: the game, you can earn another token or win a
Speaker 1: token which is called the Smooth Love Portion or SLP,
Speaker 1: and that SLP token is then required to play the
Speaker 1: other game, which is the Breeding game, and it gives
Speaker 1: that value so to say that when whenever you want
Speaker 1: to create a new Axi, you need to have this
Speaker 1: SLP token. If you don't have it, then all new
Speaker 1: Axes can ever be created. So each actially that's in
Speaker 1: existence right now is actually the result of some other
Speaker 1: human being that has played the Axi game generated the
Speaker 1: SLP token and then used that to create a new
Speaker 1: Axe through breathing. So that's how that part of the
Speaker 1: economy works. And then we've also got the a excess token,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the governance token for for the
Speaker 1: Action Infinity game universe and that's you know, highly limited,
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy million of those in existence, and
Speaker 1: it started out at a price of ten cents last
Speaker 1: year and now it's it's over one per token. So
Speaker 1: I mean, the the appreciation it has has been quite heavy,
Speaker 1: and that's because it's kind of tied to to some
Speaker 1: of the revenue streams that are that are going into
Speaker 1: the ACTI Infinity game. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the revenue streams, because you know, this is like
Speaker 1: both one of the strengths and I guess the criticisms
Speaker 1: of the entire thing. So one of the reasons actually
Speaker 1: is getting a lot of attention is because people are
Speaker 1: making quite a bit of money from playing the game.
Speaker 1: And this is how I first came across it. My
Speaker 1: Bloomberg colleague Christine Servando. She wrote a really great piece
Speaker 1: about how lots of people in the Philippines are basically
Speaker 1: quitting their jobs and just playing ax You full time
Speaker 1: and making enough money to live on. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, there's been some criticism of the business model
Speaker 1: from people who say, well, this is just sort of unsustainable.
Speaker 1: There's this really high entry cost, you know, people have
Speaker 1: to pay. Well, you can maybe update me on this,
Speaker 1: but I think it's like a minimum of six eight
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in order to get the axes that you
Speaker 1: need in order to start playing. And so it feels
Speaker 1: like you're sort of making money from the stream of
Speaker 1: new players who are coming into this. So maybe you
Speaker 1: can just break down where the revenues are actually coming
Speaker 1: from for us. Yeah. Sure, So when you look at
Speaker 1: how the SLP token, you know it's coming into existence,
Speaker 1: that's related to whenever people are playing the game, and
Speaker 1: that's well, the farming of of SLP when you were
Speaker 1: when you were a player, you can farm you know,
Speaker 1: small love potions or smooth love potions for between twelve
Speaker 1: to fifteen dollars per day. That's the that's the current value,
Speaker 1: and that has been fluctuating quite heavily over the pastor
Speaker 1: and I would say three to four months. So at
Speaker 1: one point maybe a player could earn even thirty to
Speaker 1: forty dollars per day, and that was of course very
Speaker 1: attractive for a lot of people. Now it's more normalized
Speaker 1: to what it was before, you know, a massive run
Speaker 1: up in users. When we are thinking about the long
Speaker 1: term sustainability of acting, where we consider ourselves right now
Speaker 1: is that Okay, we have two million daily active players.
Speaker 1: All of those players they will need they need three
Speaker 1: access right, so that's at least six million axes that
Speaker 1: are required for for those two million players, and in existence,
Speaker 1: we have about eight million axes or a little bit
Speaker 1: less than that, that have been bread so far. And
Speaker 1: if we then look at, you know, what is the
Speaker 1: total addressable market for something like ACTI, Well, the way
Speaker 1: we've defined it is that we don't we actually don't
Speaker 1: compete against traditional games in the same way we might
Speaker 1: actually compete against work against those players, those people in
Speaker 1: the world who are unemployed or who are earning you know,
Speaker 1: less than let's say fifteen dollars per day, so that
Speaker 1: might be and I mean, the game is fun, it's enjoyable,
Speaker 1: we have a large community, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: we can tap into a brand new user base has
Speaker 1: never even you know, considered a game in the same
Speaker 1: way like a job in the metaverse, so that you know,
Speaker 1: for us, leads those to believe that maybe we can
Speaker 1: reach even one billion or two billion people. And that
Speaker 1: means that there's still a lot of acxes that need
Speaker 1: to be produced for the foreseeable future. It's totally fine
Speaker 1: that SLP is being waited so that other players can
Speaker 1: breed for that and so which then again is the
Speaker 1: criticism that people will come with. But for us, that's
Speaker 1: that's totally fine because we need these acts in existence. Now,
Speaker 1: the question cons what happens when when we reach the
Speaker 1: total addressable market, when we have you know, let's say
Speaker 1: one billion or two billion players. Well, that's exactly when
Speaker 1: Acts Infinity has to kind of evolve a little bit
Speaker 1: from being displaced where there's a gold rusher of people
Speaker 1: who want to breed access into more of a network
Speaker 1: I would say social network where people are actually hanging
Speaker 1: around in the game, they're having fun, they're going on
Speaker 1: different adventures, they're playing many, many different games that we
Speaker 1: and also the community can create. So I think that
Speaker 1: is already a very proven model in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: let's say roadblocks for example, how many players do they
Speaker 1: have and nobody is you know, earning anything. So I
Speaker 1: think everything is about getting that early user base involved
Speaker 1: into your game so that they can fall in love
Speaker 1: with the game, falling over the art, and you know,
Speaker 1: stay inside this ecosystem, and then eventually we can evolve
Speaker 1: from there. But I think actually the Roadblocks comparison is
Speaker 1: interesting because you said the operative thing, which is that
Speaker 1: people love playing Roadblocks despite the fact that there's, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no money involved. Maybe some people are
Speaker 1: making money, but by and large that is not the motivation.
Speaker 1: And throughout years, people have loved all kinds of games
Speaker 1: that don't involve money. People love chess or people like,
Speaker 1: you know, first person shooter games. Maybe there are some
Speaker 1: tournaments or whatever you can win money, but money is
Speaker 1: not essential to the enjoyability of those games. And so
Speaker 1: I think, like, still, what maybe bothers people about Axe
Speaker 1: or what is like, is the game fun now? Do
Speaker 1: people have fun now playing the game or is it
Speaker 1: this sort of like digital trudgery where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: yes you can make money. But if there was no
Speaker 1: money by clicking over and over, or by earning this potion,
Speaker 1: or by breeding your axes, or by borrowing an axe
Speaker 1: to then breed it and then have your own by borrowing,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera, if all of the monetary appeal just
Speaker 1: sort of went away, is the game That's a very
Speaker 1: common question that we see from people who maybe you know,
Speaker 1: aren't as deep in the ecosystem as we are, and
Speaker 1: that's that's me. So that's what I admit. I'm not deep,
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm yeah, yeah, So I mean the
Speaker 1: very simple counter argument to that is, well, what happens
Speaker 1: if you remove all the bells and whistles for let's say,
Speaker 1: all mobile games, like there is no battle paths, there
Speaker 1: is no you know, nothing extra, nothing gamified that that
Speaker 1: you know, attracts players it. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't actually remove every aspect from actually because that's
Speaker 1: not how it was designed. It was decide in the
Speaker 1: way that all of the game characters are n f
Speaker 1: T s that they should be able to generate tokens,
Speaker 1: and that's a big part of, you know, the entire
Speaker 1: appeal of the game. So of course, like it's the
Speaker 1: same thing as saying, you know, if you remove the
Speaker 1: ability to play, like play the magic game, would it
Speaker 1: be fun to just collect magic cards? I think this
Speaker 1: is a different way of looking at it, but kind
Speaker 1: of answering the question more specifically, if people are enjoying
Speaker 1: actually infinity right now, Yes, a lot of people are.
Speaker 1: It's actually about when we see look at the motivation
Speaker 1: for players. Right we have Twitter polls where we can
Speaker 1: see that you know, less than of the entire player
Speaker 1: base are only in it for the money, So where
Speaker 1: we see that maybe thirty percent is in it for
Speaker 1: the community, So that would be all the social aspect
Speaker 1: around it. That would be they find friends, they learn
Speaker 1: about new technology, and then they actually love the game
Speaker 1: at its current state, which to us is of course amazing,
Speaker 1: And what it tells us is that when people come
Speaker 1: into the game, they might be, you know, extrinsically motivated.
Speaker 1: So let's say, hey, I can make you know r
Speaker 1: o I, and I can make maybe are my r
Speaker 1: o I back and let's say two months. Now, that's
Speaker 1: an incredibly powerful driver of growth. So when we then
Speaker 1: see that they come into the game, they fall in
Speaker 1: love with, you know, the ecosystem, they fall in love
Speaker 1: with everything that's around it, and then eventually some of
Speaker 1: them collectors. And now this is where the kind of
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation part come in because when we see that players,
Speaker 1: for example, in Acts Infinity, are spending over four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for an axe which has no way to gain
Speaker 1: any money, that they can only buy it, they can
Speaker 1: hold onto it, and then they can collect it. It's
Speaker 1: actually more tied intrinsic motivation that they are they see
Speaker 1: that what's happening in this community, that they want to
Speaker 1: belong to it. They want to show off their status
Speaker 1: because they're buying something that's exceedingly rare. And for us,
Speaker 1: that's also kind of the direction that we want to
Speaker 1: take actually in that you know, people find that this
Speaker 1: is more real. Often times, these these digital assets which
Speaker 1: are probably scares compared to when you look at something
Speaker 1: like in real life in terms of luxury objects like
Speaker 1: blue if its own bags or or let's say, rolux watchers,
Speaker 1: because nobody knows how many of the them are in existence,
Speaker 1: and the same actually goes for traditional digital assets in
Speaker 1: normal games, like you have no idea how many of
Speaker 1: these are in existence or if the game company just
Speaker 1: they can simply dilute you. So I think that's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the major differences. And also when we look
Speaker 1: at you know, how much money is flowing into this
Speaker 1: equal system and how many people are you know, interested
Speaker 1: in the game itself, you know, the economy aspect of its.
Speaker 1: Right now, over two point forty five billion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of AXI n FT assets have been traded on our
Speaker 1: n F t marketplace. So you know, simply saying that, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, the game isn't fun, I think it's very unfair.
Speaker 1: And then also it doesn't it actually disrespects everything that
Speaker 1: we are trying to build. And also the players in
Speaker 1: our game who are spending you know, ten hours not
Speaker 1: only on the game, like playing the game, but also
Speaker 1: playing the marketplace, playing the social game. So I think
Speaker 1: you know that these are it's very complex part of it.
Speaker 1: Then you guys touched on it also early on when
Speaker 1: you look at the when you look at the ecosystem
Speaker 1: in Magic the Gathering, right, they had Friday Night Magic,
Speaker 1: they had all of these magic grand free tournaments. Like
Speaker 1: people are collecting their starting up their own you know,
Speaker 1: Magic the gathering shops. The same thing is happening in Axi.
Speaker 1: You have people are making their own you know, scholarships
Speaker 1: or teams or even businesses. Right. I've seen a contract
Speaker 1: work contract between fayers, right, I think that's very unique.
Speaker 1: So I do want to get into how you're sort
Speaker 1: of managing the whole economy of Axe. But just one
Speaker 1: more question on this point. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: criticisms is the high cost of entry and this idea
Speaker 1: that maybe existing players are making money from the influx
Speaker 1: of new players, So what would happen to the game
Speaker 1: if you were to lower the entry costs? And I
Speaker 1: think I read somewhere that you were planning or thinking
Speaker 1: about doing like a free to play version of Taxi.
Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, like, what would happen to the
Speaker 1: existing product if prices for entry got lowered? And then
Speaker 1: also why the free to play idea if the financial
Speaker 1: incentives are part of the equation of Axi as it
Speaker 1: was originally conceived. Yeah, sure, so Act Infinity was always
Speaker 1: actually designed to be calm, free to play, because that's
Speaker 1: how you know, see that we connect into the get
Speaker 1: the AXI product into as many hands as possible. Right,
Speaker 1: we know that people just want to some of them
Speaker 1: just might want to play the game, try it out
Speaker 1: before they actually take the plunge and you know, buy
Speaker 1: there for his game character. So what we can rather
Speaker 1: do is we can get their ability to earn tokens
Speaker 1: if they you know, if they if they play the
Speaker 1: free type of game. And a big reason for why
Speaker 1: we don't have it is we actually have to solve
Speaker 1: a lot of different problems before you know, we were
Speaker 1: ready to distribute or even try to distribute the game
Speaker 1: on more traditional app stores. And that means that, let's say,
Speaker 1: if we want to have as many millions of users
Speaker 1: or even billions of users, that we're looking for the
Speaker 1: underlying you know, infrastructure needs to be there, and the
Speaker 1: same also goals for you know, how we are looking
Speaker 1: at the distribution channel. So when we are distributing, actually,
Speaker 1: let's say, if we want to distribute actually on the
Speaker 1: iOS or the the Apple Store or Google Play, like,
Speaker 1: there is currently no way for people to just simply
Speaker 1: click and then buy and get there and if he
Speaker 1: very easily right, so we needed to make our own
Speaker 1: distribution channel for that. The goal is to distribute the
Speaker 1: new game on Google Play or the Apple Store and
Speaker 1: eventually kind of on board them from there to become
Speaker 1: blockchain type of players where they can actually own their
Speaker 1: digital assets and you know, by extension, there also their identity.
Speaker 1: Before we go on a little bit further, Tracy, you
Speaker 1: both kind of mention and did. But it has gotten
Speaker 1: incredible success in the Philippines where there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people playing Axe, and as you mentioned, are these
Speaker 1: so called scholarships because the price of the three n
Speaker 1: f T s that one is required to buy has
Speaker 1: gotten high, and so could you explain this sort of
Speaker 1: like this sub phenomenon that's going on. What are the
Speaker 1: show called scholarships and how is it enabling people who
Speaker 1: might otherwise not have much cash to upfront to get
Speaker 1: onto the game, to get into the game. Yes, so
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about the scholarship is that it was
Speaker 1: actually made by our players first. Like that feature, I mean,
Speaker 1: we always had an idea that we wanted to make,
Speaker 1: you know, let players lend out their axes to other
Speaker 1: players because we had such an early, you know, active
Speaker 1: player base who were breeding accees before they were very expensive.
Speaker 1: So some players might have several thousands of axes and
Speaker 1: they wanted to use them, but not a lot of
Speaker 1: people they couldn't afford these act characters. So that feature
Speaker 1: was actually coming internally as well. But then the way
Speaker 1: that our accounts accounts at up his work is that
Speaker 1: it allows people to actually separate being of the assets
Speaker 1: by the playing of the game. So that means that
Speaker 1: if you own a team of access on your account,
Speaker 1: you can actually let another player log into that play
Speaker 1: the game, and then the rewards will go to the
Speaker 1: main account, which then again can be split between the
Speaker 1: player and the owner of the character. Players actually saw
Speaker 1: that and they did it themselves, and then we just
Speaker 1: decided to let them run with it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: from the sky Navis perspective, we don't promote any of that,
Speaker 1: you know, lending of it yet because we haven't had
Speaker 1: that feature internally, but you know, people are are still
Speaker 1: spreading it, of course, and it's very interesting to see
Speaker 1: how that has developed. Wait, so this actually reminds me
Speaker 1: of one sort of technical thing that I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you. But you have rules that no one can
Speaker 1: have more than one account at a time. Can can
Speaker 1: you explain why those rules are in place? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: to sink. I think that's one of the most important
Speaker 1: things of an ecosystem such as acts. So the way
Speaker 1: that when we look at Acting Infinity, we think of
Speaker 1: it as a network, and the way that a network
Speaker 1: you know, grows is of course, you know, huge new
Speaker 1: human beings. They come into the network and they tell
Speaker 1: their friends and they might add value to it. And
Speaker 1: that value could be let's say, create content or you know,
Speaker 1: they might stream, they might even play the game. One
Speaker 1: of these things. They add value to the to the game.
Speaker 1: Side of action infinity and in return we can actually
Speaker 1: give them some tokens, and that token, for example, is
Speaker 1: tied into into the breeding aspect of the game. But
Speaker 1: when you look at, for example, the person who is
Speaker 1: playing several counts at the same time, or the worst cases,
Speaker 1: they might be using robots like they're trying to book
Speaker 1: the ecosystem, that again, it doesn't add any more value
Speaker 1: to the network. So then if they are then experting
Speaker 1: it by getting more tokens than they should, that's actually
Speaker 1: a net loss for everyone else who is playing acting.
Speaker 1: So that's where we have that have that rule into place.
Speaker 1: So one of the most important things that one of
Speaker 1: the most difficult things that are creating something like access
Speaker 1: is that you know, proof of human being. How do
Speaker 1: we make sure that they're actually humans on the other
Speaker 1: side and they're not not robots trying to to exploit
Speaker 1: this system. And a part about is the part of
Speaker 1: our that that's possible is you know, actually the fact
Speaker 1: that it's it's quite expensive to get started, so that
Speaker 1: the stake that these abusers have in the game is
Speaker 1: actually quite high. If they are abusing and we catch them,
Speaker 1: you know, we we restrict their access to the game,
Speaker 1: and so that costs about six dollars. That's also about
Speaker 1: a pretty heavy deterrent to not breakthrough rules. So this
Speaker 1: gets into like sort of a really interesting philosophical question
Speaker 1: about block chains, because you know, you think back to
Speaker 1: like the sort of like the core chains. There's nobody
Speaker 1: at big coin. You know, there's nobody who in bitcoin
Speaker 1: who even knows who you are. You can have infinite
Speaker 1: number of wallets if you want, and different private keys
Speaker 1: on different hardware wallets and so forth. The Ethereum chain
Speaker 1: is roughly the same. But then as these new applications developed,
Speaker 1: and I actually do want to get into how you
Speaker 1: use Ethereum because you've also sort of built your own
Speaker 1: side chain. I think that's interesting. But as new applications developed,
Speaker 1: some of these sort of like core principle ideas that
Speaker 1: we might associate with block chain anonymity, pseudo anonymity, no rules, trustlessness, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Certain of those get sacrificed such that there is, in
Speaker 1: your case, humans making rules, humans who could kick other
Speaker 1: humans off. Some of the sort of trustlessness core basic
Speaker 1: ideas of blockchain does not necessarily apply once it gets
Speaker 1: down to the game application level. Well, for us this
Speaker 1: is a very natural actually how the game evolved. So
Speaker 1: if we look back into we came into the space
Speaker 1: having very I would say we were naive, but also
Speaker 1: very hopeful in the way that you know, the the
Speaker 1: the economy and like everything in the ecosystem in the book,
Speaker 1: chain ecosystem would evolve. So when we created actually pretty
Speaker 1: much everything was on chain, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: you needed to send the transaction whenever you wanted to
Speaker 1: bat and then again you know that combined into an
Speaker 1: old chained result which anyone can prove, anyone can see,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were following that decentralized details. Over time.
Speaker 1: What we realized is that you know, building a product
Speaker 1: based on these very constraints, like very heavy constraints, it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible, especially if you want to reach you know,
Speaker 1: the masses, if you want to teach them about this
Speaker 1: new technology. So that basically means that we had to
Speaker 1: take you know, we had to sacrifice parts the centralization,
Speaker 1: and the beginning was actually the game side. So right
Speaker 1: now out of the game logic is off chain. So
Speaker 1: that means that we already as a game studio, can
Speaker 1: make many many changes, right we can also you know
Speaker 1: let's say if we want to buff like certain skills
Speaker 1: make them stronger weaker, we can do that, of course,
Speaker 1: and we're very transparent about and I think you know,
Speaker 1: that is one of the core you know, the core
Speaker 1: things that we think is important when you're building using
Speaker 1: this technology. So what are the most important things for
Speaker 1: the players or for the end user in our experience,
Speaker 1: what the users won't right now is they want to
Speaker 1: like have the build re need to freely trade the
Speaker 1: assets that they have. They want to be able to
Speaker 1: monetize their time inside the game, and they want to
Speaker 1: be able to see how many of these things are
Speaker 1: in existence, right And I don't mean you know, the
Speaker 1: level of trustlessness that you might have in bitcoin, for example,
Speaker 1: because the values there are are very very heavy, so
Speaker 1: you might need very very decentralized chain where you know,
Speaker 1: nothing can be censored. All that stuff. On our side,
Speaker 1: we we actually you know, disregard that and going on
Speaker 1: a little bit of a different direction, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: a big part of why we managed to get to
Speaker 1: where we are today. M Well, can we talk about
Speaker 1: the blockchain then, so actually runs on ethereum and of course,
Speaker 1: like one of the big criticisms of Ethereum is always
Speaker 1: that it doesn't like work so well at a very
Speaker 1: very large scale. So i'd be curious to get your
Speaker 1: impression of like working with Ethereum and like how you're
Speaker 1: sort of coping with that scaling problem as ACTI continues
Speaker 1: to grow, because it, again, like acts is probably one
Speaker 1: of the fastest growing Ethereum related projects at the moment.
Speaker 1: So I imagine you have some experience with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so actually has for many many years been very very
Speaker 1: closely tied to the theorum. I mean, we deployed our
Speaker 1: first initial versions on the theory. Our n f T
Speaker 1: s are where even you know, deployed on the theory
Speaker 1: before the n f T standard was set. That was
Speaker 1: like March, or if I recall April. So what we
Speaker 1: figured out is that if you are all of your
Speaker 1: main assets on ethereum and you are dependent on you know,
Speaker 1: sharing the block space with everyone else who is using
Speaker 1: the ethereum blockchain, that's a very head like tall order
Speaker 1: if you want to scale to to the level that
Speaker 1: we wanted, or if you want let's say millions several
Speaker 1: millions of users. So over time, overwy we were exploring
Speaker 1: different scaling options, and in the end we decided to
Speaker 1: build our own side chain to Ethereum. Now that is
Speaker 1: much more energy efficient. It is much is a free
Speaker 1: four player to actually make transactions, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be very very cheap once we actually upgrade the chain
Speaker 1: a little bit. So it's an ongoing type of the situation.
Speaker 1: We see that we need to be more effective, we
Speaker 1: need our own infrastructure. So in I would say to
Speaker 1: explain this in a in a very you know, simple way,
Speaker 1: is we believe that we are in the server era
Speaker 1: of block chains. And when I say that, I mean
Speaker 1: when we look at how the Internet scales early on,
Speaker 1: is that well, you couldn't really trust the clouds, or
Speaker 1: you couldn't trust to have your servers or your your
Speaker 1: homepage on another you know server. You needed to have
Speaker 1: that you know, backbone in the basement so that you
Speaker 1: could actually make sure that your server or that your
Speaker 1: homepage was always up. The same thing is actually happening
Speaker 1: right now where we see that if we're going to
Speaker 1: go into we were going to trust Ethereum or you
Speaker 1: know that the very decentralized web, we would be competing
Speaker 1: for you know, space with every other application. So we
Speaker 1: just decided to make ourselves make our own you know
Speaker 1: server in the basement air, which is basically rollant for now,
Speaker 1: where we can control some of the parameters and make
Speaker 1: sure that we're not sharing books space with too many
Speaker 1: of other you know, successful applications. I want to get
Speaker 1: into this a little bit more because I think it's
Speaker 1: really important for people think about the evolution of blockchain
Speaker 1: in general. So it's called the ronan Ethereum side chain.
Speaker 1: It's not completely disconnected from Ethereum, and there are other
Speaker 1: side changes as well. There's the Binance chain, which has
Speaker 1: done very well, and that's also a side chain. I
Speaker 1: think there's one called Madic, which is also a side chain.
Speaker 1: Explain how a side chain still works and relies on
Speaker 1: to some extent the security and trustlessness of the core
Speaker 1: Ethereum chain while offering sort of scalable and cheap transaction. Sure,
Speaker 1: So when we look at you know, both Binance, the
Speaker 1: smart chain, and Polygon or Mathic as we said, and
Speaker 1: also rollant Um, what we see is that these chains
Speaker 1: are built using the Theorem virtual machine, which is the
Speaker 1: the code base that is running Ethereum. So that's deadly
Speaker 1: where you start out and then you change certain things
Speaker 1: in the in the configuration of it, and that might
Speaker 1: be you know four ethereum right, you're using proof of
Speaker 1: work when it comes to mining, so you know, you're
Speaker 1: dependent on all of these other machines that are helping
Speaker 1: out to validate transactions, and then you're giving a reward,
Speaker 1: which is you know, the mining reward for something like
Speaker 1: Roland right, we are using right now, we are in
Speaker 1: a proof of authority type of situation where you know,
Speaker 1: people are not staking any of their tokens, but they're
Speaker 1: staking their reputation basically the different type of validators. So
Speaker 1: that's one way of doing it. And eventually we're going
Speaker 1: to be moving over to a proof of steak or
Speaker 1: delegated proof of steak where you need to have your
Speaker 1: own tokens that you are then staking, which is then
Speaker 1: your well then you know, get slashed in case you
Speaker 1: are a malicious actor in the in the ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: let's say that you are just just to be clear,
Speaker 1: does your side chain interact with the main ethereum chain
Speaker 1: at all anymore or is it merely that it uses
Speaker 1: the same E v M language. Yeah, So so there
Speaker 1: are there's a there's a connection there. Whenever you want
Speaker 1: to let's say, if you want to move your assets
Speaker 1: from Rollan to Ethereum, you can definitely do that, but
Speaker 1: there is no level of security that's directly like we
Speaker 1: are not cannant on Ethereum to that extenter. But of course,
Speaker 1: like if Ethereum got compromised, you know, our chain would
Speaker 1: also be very affected by that. But if our chain
Speaker 1: got compromised, all the assets that are on rolland would
Speaker 1: then you know, be affected on Ethereum as well, because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a bridge that is connecting the two.
Speaker 1: So whenever you're depositing your assets to Roland, which I
Speaker 1: think is there's about you know, two point five to
Speaker 1: three billion dollars worth of assets secured on Roland, will
Speaker 1: you know that's the that's the risk for for everyone
Speaker 1: who is postitting their assets there. So actually this reminds
Speaker 1: me of something else I want to ask you, But um,
Speaker 1: I think you recently announced that you're launching your own
Speaker 1: decentralized exchange which is going to be built on Ronan.
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through like the thinking they're like,
Speaker 1: why do your own one and then why launch it
Speaker 1: on your own side chain versus something else. Sure, So
Speaker 1: when we are looking at the products that we need, right,
Speaker 1: so we're always thinking about it from from the player perspective.
Speaker 1: So what do the players in actual infinity actually want
Speaker 1: and how and how do they want it? So let's
Speaker 1: say when you're playing the game, you get your get
Speaker 1: your SLP talkings, right, the next natural step it Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to breathe or new Actually okay, well
Speaker 1: if I can do that, then I can do that
Speaker 1: on Roland. But if you want to trade it into
Speaker 1: something else right now, you actually have to bridge that
Speaker 1: to ethereum or move that to finance or some other exchange.
Speaker 1: Right that is a very bad used for experience. Like
Speaker 1: that's not really how it is in any other normal game.
Speaker 1: So if you're comparing you to let's say World of Forcraft,
Speaker 1: when you are finding let's say gold there or any
Speaker 1: other let's say, would you would be able to trade
Speaker 1: that immediately on a marketplace. So that's it. That's that's it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just going to be an expanded marketplace
Speaker 1: which now suddenly has access to these fungible tokens like
Speaker 1: you know, SLP a excess and in the future maybe
Speaker 1: would inside access stone I think you've got guys understand
Speaker 1: my drift here. It's just about the underlying infrastructure is
Speaker 1: a decentralized exchange. So for normal people, like the only
Speaker 1: thing they would see is the marketplace. Are you going
Speaker 1: to offer um like some form of defy on the
Speaker 1: new exchange as well? So one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about act now is that you can take the tokens
Speaker 1: that are in existence, like a access or SLP or whatever,
Speaker 1: and do lots of de five things to them, like
Speaker 1: staking or lending them out or whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: Is that like also an activity that you would aim
Speaker 1: to capture for your users, that that that touches on
Speaker 1: some of the you know, the future that we see
Speaker 1: for Sky maybe is an ACCI. So when we are
Speaker 1: looking at our users right, what we see is that
Speaker 1: of the user base, they have never used any sort
Speaker 1: of crypto before. Of them have never even had a
Speaker 1: bank account before. So these players, they're very new to
Speaker 1: the financial system. And if they can start playing a
Speaker 1: game like ACXI where they actually end up owning their
Speaker 1: tokens and their assets and by extension digital identity, that
Speaker 1: means that eventually they might be able to do something
Speaker 1: more with them. Because they have their wallet automatically created
Speaker 1: when they set up a game account, and they will
Speaker 1: get money there too, and that means that you know,
Speaker 1: they can maybe even spend that in the real world eventually,
Speaker 1: and of course be able to lend on it. It
Speaker 1: just depends on features we want to add to Roman,
Speaker 1: and that's going to take a little bit of time
Speaker 1: to figure out, Like how effective will the chain be
Speaker 1: as we are scaling, So let's say we might take
Speaker 1: ten million users one million, how how many things can
Speaker 1: actually be on chain before even we are struggling at
Speaker 1: this scare. But I'm super excited about the potential to
Speaker 1: you know, onboard millions of people who have never used
Speaker 1: financial tools at all into the connected world. I should say,
Speaker 1: so I had another question, but I want to ask
Speaker 1: this first because you have a problem that very few
Speaker 1: crypto applications have had to deal with, which is mass popularity.
Speaker 1: So it'saying even if you do look at like the
Speaker 1: top applications that are built on top of Ethereum, like
Speaker 1: unit swap whose founder we talked to, or the lending
Speaker 1: protocol of or some of these others, they may have
Speaker 1: a lot of money locked in them, but they don't
Speaker 1: exactly have like mass popularity by any stretch on the
Speaker 1: scale that actually we're talking like millions of people. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure there's not like there are not many sort
Speaker 1: of crypto apps that have like millions of people like
Speaker 1: you have. So you have this problem and one of
Speaker 1: the ways you solved it was creating the run in
Speaker 1: side chain. Do you ultimately see, like, let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: just looking at the broad expanse of things that happened
Speaker 1: on crypto and various n f T projects, do you
Speaker 1: ultimately that as things get popular, that it'll look like
Speaker 1: a you know, maybe some lending protocol becomes really huge,
Speaker 1: and like why are we paying huge fees to eat whales?
Speaker 1: Why are we accepting such variable gas fees every time
Speaker 1: there's like a new token launch of some like derivative
Speaker 1: of a puppy coin or something like that. And we'll
Speaker 1: then make the decision that why don't we have our
Speaker 1: own ethereum side chain where we can have stable prices,
Speaker 1: cheap prices, high scalable throughput, and not have to worry
Speaker 1: about some new n f T drop that's going to
Speaker 1: cause gas fees while we're trying to do like our
Speaker 1: staking on unit swap that has nothing to do with it, Like,
Speaker 1: is this Do you see what you've done as a
Speaker 1: likely um part of the roadmap for other popular apps,
Speaker 1: even if they don't see it yet. Yeah, I mean definitely.
Speaker 1: I think the great thing about about building on on
Speaker 1: the e v M is that you know, we can
Speaker 1: top into the interior and ecosystem and we can basically
Speaker 1: fork off if we see that there there are things
Speaker 1: that we might find valuable. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it also adds value to ethereum, because any innovation that
Speaker 1: happens on the Roland side chain will also benefit ethereum.
Speaker 1: So I'm in gredually bullish on ethereum as you know,
Speaker 1: the center of or the the how can I call
Speaker 1: it the the the settlement layer for the new Internet,
Speaker 1: And I think in as ethereum scales, that's just going
Speaker 1: to be more and more apparent um. So for me,
Speaker 1: I think it actually benefits everyone. But but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure like that all of the all of the transaction
Speaker 1: should be on the theorem right now as they are.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm an avid and a t collector. I love,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to get some tokens, but you know,
Speaker 1: when when when there's going on, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: a very heavy gas work, so it's pretty hard to
Speaker 1: even for me, even for me to justify it. Of course,
Speaker 1: as as a crypto person who's been in the space
Speaker 1: for years now, I think it's getting a little bit ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and of course it can't really be like that, so
Speaker 1: but I think, you know, it's it's just the start.
Speaker 1: But I'm as I said, I am bullish on the
Speaker 1: on the theoreum capturing a lot of values. So this
Speaker 1: gets back to another question that I was wondering about it,
Speaker 1: and I guess it has to do with openness and
Speaker 1: the degree of like, Okay, as you go down this
Speaker 1: sort of like I guess maybe as you go up
Speaker 1: the sort of application layers, you sacrifice certain elements of
Speaker 1: sort of core blockchain trustlessness. Can could someone else on
Speaker 1: the run in side chain build an actually game could
Speaker 1: if Tracy and I came up with the game, could
Speaker 1: we develop one that people could use their extra characters
Speaker 1: and plan that's the plan in the future, But for
Speaker 1: now it's still a little bit earlier. So what we
Speaker 1: need is to make sure that it first works for
Speaker 1: our use case. That's I mean, that's where we made
Speaker 1: it right, it would be too early for us to
Speaker 1: to share the access with with with the world. First
Speaker 1: of all, like we don't have let's say, the the
Speaker 1: APIs aren't you know, solid enough to to ensure that
Speaker 1: you know, not enough people are hammering them, so you know,
Speaker 1: that might mean that there would be you know, less stable,
Speaker 1: that the service are less stable than they should be.
Speaker 1: So we're actually waiting a little bit on that. So
Speaker 1: we open it up. But in the future, you know,
Speaker 1: not the only Acti Infinity games, but but also other games,
Speaker 1: other games studios that that's what we plan to work
Speaker 1: with because you know, if you're a game studio want
Speaker 1: to wanting to make something like Acti Infinity or another
Speaker 1: type of game, and you see ACTE Okay, they're successful,
Speaker 1: they have a nice economy, and they even have the
Speaker 1: scalable infrastructure of the distribution channels. Now why would they
Speaker 1: not work with us? So so that's exactly why we
Speaker 1: kind of made this entire ecosystem. So we needed to
Speaker 1: solve our problems first, and that means that we probably
Speaker 1: understand them anyone else in the world, and we can
Speaker 1: also solve them for other games studios in the future
Speaker 1: as well, so why don't we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the sort of in game economy, because one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things in all of us, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in the intro, was not only are you making
Speaker 1: all these technical decisions about, you know, how to manage
Speaker 1: the blockchain, whether or not to launch a decentralized platform
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, or a decentralized exchange, but you're
Speaker 1: also managing that ecosystem. You're managing an actual economy, so
Speaker 1: you're sort of like acting like a central bank. So
Speaker 1: could you maybe give us an instance of for an
Speaker 1: example of the kind of problems that you will encounter
Speaker 1: in managing the axis system? So I imagine there is
Speaker 1: volatility in um some of the axes that actual n
Speaker 1: f T S and then you mentioned, of course the
Speaker 1: currencies or the tokens access and s LP they've been
Speaker 1: going up quite a lot recently. What kind of challenges
Speaker 1: does that pose and and how what's your vision for
Speaker 1: how this economy should ultimately be working and heading to
Speaker 1: sure trace? Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the one of the real interesting things here that you
Speaker 1: not only are we doing very heavy technological innovation, but
Speaker 1: there's also business model innovation here um econom make innovation
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, how do we see the
Speaker 1: world working in the future. So we see action Comminuity
Speaker 1: as a digital nation. And of course we are functioning
Speaker 1: as the states in a sense that we are tax
Speaker 1: system a smaller amount rather than us you know, from
Speaker 1: a marketplace feed perspective, right, whenever a person is trading
Speaker 1: on our marketplace, we take a four fee, and that
Speaker 1: you know, enables a lot of economic activity between players
Speaker 1: because it becomes a little bit like let's say the US,
Speaker 1: whenever people are doing commerce against each other. You know,
Speaker 1: the state might take a small tax on that. But
Speaker 1: in traditional games, the state would you know, take of
Speaker 1: of of every economic activity that's happening, like that's their goal.
Speaker 1: So if we were a traditional game, we would take
Speaker 1: all of the money. But that's kind of one part
Speaker 1: of a lookout, you know. The one of the more
Speaker 1: challenging things is actually balancing out the or you know,
Speaker 1: making sure that the sp price is not too reflective.
Speaker 1: When new people call into the game, they might have
Speaker 1: you know, oh, super high expectations SUP is going to
Speaker 1: stay at forty cents forever, when in reality, three months
Speaker 1: before that it was at you know, two cents, so
Speaker 1: that is a problem from that, you know, level of
Speaker 1: expectation that these players have. So we are trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that the price is somewhat stable,
Speaker 1: and there are different ways that we can do that.
Speaker 1: So when we see acts, as I mentioned, we we
Speaker 1: function as the state, and that when we are balancing out,
Speaker 1: Let's say how much SLP is required per breed of Actually,
Speaker 1: we might reduce that or we might increase that. And
Speaker 1: then there's another portion of the breeding fee which is
Speaker 1: required to pay like as a developer fee, which is
Speaker 1: also a part of how we make money, So we
Speaker 1: might increase that or decrease that so that you know,
Speaker 1: it balances out a little bit more. You know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about you know, Tracy started the discussion talking
Speaker 1: about Magic the Gathering, and I admit I really should
Speaker 1: learn more about the game and its history. But my
Speaker 1: impression is the company Wizards of the Coast has taken
Speaker 1: its responsibility as the steward of the magic economy very seriously.
Speaker 1: They've never like flood the market with lots of different
Speaker 1: cards because they might be expensive at any at any point.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like made these decisions and try to
Speaker 1: get things out of way? Can you can it all
Speaker 1: be done? Is you say eventually algorithmically such that no
Speaker 1: one needs to trust you? Or do you always think
Speaker 1: there's going to be like some entity that like feels
Speaker 1: a sense of responsibility towards towards the game, towards the ecosystem. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's begin with Magic to Gathering. So I still follow
Speaker 1: that scene lately, like I mean, Wizards of the Coast
Speaker 1: are you know, now trying to extract as much money
Speaker 1: as they count from the player base. So they so
Speaker 1: they are dumping out all of these different we got
Speaker 1: we gotta do Wizards of the Coast episode, it's like, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: we gotta yeah, definitely asked them like how much money
Speaker 1: are they earn? Because it must be insane. But in
Speaker 1: any case, the way that we see it is that
Speaker 1: you know, Act Infinity is should be governed by the
Speaker 1: a excess token holders, but sky Navis, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the company that that we have, needs to be very
Speaker 1: deeply involved with setting the direction and especially as we
Speaker 1: move towards the centralization, because you know, if a if
Speaker 1: a game or any kind of the call is supposed
Speaker 1: to be governed by you know, the token holders. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a role to decentralization. But we need to
Speaker 1: be progressive in that sense. We need we need to move,
Speaker 1: we need to walk before we can run. So by
Speaker 1: saying that I need to we actually need to make
Speaker 1: sure that it's stable first. So that would be one
Speaker 1: of like the foundational things that we need to ship.
Speaker 1: How long will that take? I guess we'll see. We
Speaker 1: don't know because it has never been created before, so
Speaker 1: we might take five years, it might take ten years.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we have to be honest about
Speaker 1: these things that you know, sure, we're making something brand
Speaker 1: new here. There are some problems, but there are massive
Speaker 1: opportunities here as well. And I think the whole world
Speaker 1: will be watching exactly what's happening in actually Infinity because
Speaker 1: maybe not only can we you know, improve the game
Speaker 1: side of it, but maybe also improve you know, how
Speaker 1: the world works. So I'm incredibly excited about the future here.
Speaker 1: Not to be labor the Wizards of the Coast analogy,
Speaker 1: but I mean one of the things that they did
Speaker 1: do in order to sort of rebalance out the magic
Speaker 1: the gathering experience or ecosystem, was they set up what
Speaker 1: was it called the pro League right when, like when
Speaker 1: there were so many powerful cards that were out in
Speaker 1: the game, like wasn't becoming that much fun to play
Speaker 1: because if someone you know had a Black Lotus or whatever,
Speaker 1: they could just like without a bunch of those and
Speaker 1: win the game really easily. Is no one wanted to
Speaker 1: play anymore. They created a pro league that had different rules,
Speaker 1: and the whole idea was to actually make the game
Speaker 1: fun and interesting again. And my understanding is that Axie
Speaker 1: does have some people who sort of livestream gaming on
Speaker 1: Twitch or Discord or whatever. But like, is that something
Speaker 1: that that you could see, like you guys really pushing for,
Speaker 1: like this idea of sort of like a professional league
Speaker 1: or maybe like more creative solutions to solving imbalances that
Speaker 1: may emerge in the Axi economy. Yeah. I mean, so
Speaker 1: my background is, you know, as a game person, I
Speaker 1: loved I was even trying to get into the pro
Speaker 1: tore at one point in Magically Gathering. But I have
Speaker 1: played competitive you know, both Worldcraft three Data and Dodata two.
Speaker 1: So I mean I'm always pushing for that side of
Speaker 1: you know, the acts infinity, And I think you see
Speaker 1: Actuffinity working, is that you know, the people who have
Speaker 1: the best access, they can't always win all of the time.
Speaker 1: There has to be skilled involved as well, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, the next the game aspect of it. That's
Speaker 1: also why we are you know, doubling down on the
Speaker 1: East Ports and various areas of the world so we
Speaker 1: might and we even have you know, a seasonable season
Speaker 1: inside the game itself, so if you're ranking among the
Speaker 1: top thousand players, you actually get a higher reward. So
Speaker 1: we want to reward good players, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a part of what gives certain aspects of access value. Alex.
Speaker 1: It was great to have you on and hear about
Speaker 1: like how AXI is working currently and all the things
Speaker 1: that you have planned for it. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: this is definitely one of the more for most ambitious
Speaker 1: projects that I've heard in the crypto space. So really
Speaker 1: interesting to hear from you. Thank you so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks crazy, thanks, Joe, I mean, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: I think, incredibly exciting to side of days that had Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was great, Thank you so much so, Joe. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought that conversation was like very very fascinating, mostly
Speaker 1: for the point that you kind of made about how
Speaker 1: this is one of the few blockchain projects that is
Speaker 1: actually like scaling at an enormous rate and actually having
Speaker 1: a lot of people who aren't playing it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of crypto stuff that has a ton of money,
Speaker 1: Like there's a ton of like money, but there are
Speaker 1: not a lot of crypto things that have a ton
Speaker 1: of people and or apps. And I think, like if
Speaker 1: you actually looked at like the daily number of people
Speaker 1: like say using unit swap wildly successful defied platform, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's like still like bad many is certainly
Speaker 1: not dealing with millions of people by any stretch. So
Speaker 1: it also gets back to a point that I think
Speaker 1: we've discussed in some of our DeFi episode, which is
Speaker 1: about the educational process in all of this. So like, I,
Speaker 1: you know, it's tricky enough for me to open a
Speaker 1: meta mask account from like Hong Kong using a Hong
Speaker 1: Kong credit card, um, but then like trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to state coins or do actual defy things
Speaker 1: like it just seems incredibly complex to me. But if
Speaker 1: you start having these games where everything is sort of
Speaker 1: built in, and that's why I think the decentralized exchange
Speaker 1: is quite interesting, and you start sort of teaching I
Speaker 1: mean literally millions of people about crypto and blockchain and
Speaker 1: n f t s and defy like that is very
Speaker 1: interesting to me. It actually kind of blows my mind
Speaker 1: the hoops that people have to jump through, and then
Speaker 1: they do jump through them, like you know, I like
Speaker 1: to me, you know, I like like like we've only said,
Speaker 1: like you know, you set up a metal mask account, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's pretty complicated. Buying coins is complicated staking and then
Speaker 1: it's like you know, and it's just like on like
Speaker 1: the big block chain, so that's just like ethereum. And
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, now I'm gonna like bridge my
Speaker 1: uh tokens over to madic or the Binance chain or
Speaker 1: something like that. But like people are doing it and
Speaker 1: figuring it out, and then it's like okay, sky mave
Speaker 1: is or actually I have to buy three axes and
Speaker 1: I need some SLP because that's what's necessary. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, yeah, I saw a thing once. It's
Speaker 1: like a nine step process, and yet to have that
Speaker 1: nine step process and they have that success, you know,
Speaker 1: it's still I guess to this fundamental question though, that's
Speaker 1: like almost impossible to answer. It's like is it really
Speaker 1: fun or is this like, yeah, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: nine steps because I can make more money in a
Speaker 1: day than I can working minimum wage and the Philippines
Speaker 1: which is where they're very popular, so that's still like
Speaker 1: kind of this unanswered thing. But then on the flip side,
Speaker 1: it's like this has been the criticism of crypto from
Speaker 1: day one. It's like, well, aren't you just in this
Speaker 1: for the speculation And it's like seems like the answer
Speaker 1: to a lot of these things. Yes, but crypto keeps growing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's very like it's chicken and Eggie.
Speaker 1: So here's what I think is changing, Like this idea
Speaker 1: that crypto is a viable alternative to normal jobs or
Speaker 1: traditional jobs, or the idea that like crypto is a
Speaker 1: viable way of making money. And you weren't here for
Speaker 1: this episode, but Joseph Wang about a week or two
Speaker 1: ago was talking about this idea that like maybe one
Speaker 1: of the factors in persistent like shortages of labor supply
Speaker 1: in the US might be because people are sat there
Speaker 1: saying loads of people making money off of bitcoin or
Speaker 1: whatever or game stock, stock or whatever, and so that
Speaker 1: kind of becomes a viable alternative. I think that is
Speaker 1: what's changing. Like if you would have told people ten
Speaker 1: or twenty years ago, uh, you don't have to work
Speaker 1: your day job. You can just sit and play like
Speaker 1: this Axi Infinity game and make a living wage, I
Speaker 1: think like no one would have be yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: and that's true. But to push back and to your
Speaker 1: point that you brought up, it's like, how much of
Speaker 1: these jobs are only viable because their premised on the
Speaker 1: existence of new people coming into the space. So it's
Speaker 1: like you could make a living selling paint. It's not
Speaker 1: premised on the existence of more people are entering the
Speaker 1: paint industry. It's premised on the existence of people wanting
Speaker 1: to paint their own right. Like, at some point, I
Speaker 1: think that's a very valid criticism. At some point, crypto
Speaker 1: maybe be the kind of thing where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's providing financial services that people have ven used in
Speaker 1: the real economy in some meaning, and that could be
Speaker 1: a metaverse. So when I say real economy, I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean a physical economy, but I do wonder, like
Speaker 1: how much of crypto profits are still simply premised on
Speaker 1: the idea of more people getting into crypto totally. And again,
Speaker 1: like I think ACXI is sort of like a great
Speaker 1: example of all these big themes and questions all in
Speaker 1: like one concentrated games. So it's going to be really
Speaker 1: interesting to see what happens as they continue to grow. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they were talking about getting to billions of people,
Speaker 1: and it's even alex said, like, at some point, okay,
Speaker 1: it's like when we hit our two billion tam or
Speaker 1: when we then we we really got to make sure
Speaker 1: the game is like super fun to play. Yeah, exactly. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: well should we leave it there. Yeah, there's so much
Speaker 1: more to talk about that there. As you say, there's
Speaker 1: like no stopping point with any of this, but yeah,
Speaker 1: let's leave it there. All right. Um. This has been
Speaker 1: another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Halloway. And
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: the Stalwart. And you should follow our guest on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Alexander Leonard Larson. He's the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: sky Mavis, the company behind Actually Infinity. His handle is
Speaker 1: at psych out six. Follow our producer Laura Carlson. She's
Speaker 1: at Laura M. Carlson, Follow the Bloomberg Head of podcast
Speaker 1: Francesca Levi at Francesco Today, and check out all of
Speaker 1: our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.