george grombacher 0:00
Come on

What do I put this is George G and the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong apart for rug, Thomas rug. Are you ready to do this?

Unknown Speaker 0:20
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let’s,

george grombacher 0:22
let’s go. Rog is a disrupter an influencer in the NFT space. He’s raising money, launching projects getting excited to have you on. Rog, tell us a little about your personal life. So more about your work and why you do what you do.

Rug Thomas 0:39
Yeah, absolutely. As far as personal life and work, they’re pretty well overlap. At this point, we’re in a pretty rapidly changing industry, that’s just different day by day. So we really don’t have much time for personal life, believe it or not. But as far as work, work is amazing. We have a team of 15 individuals that build technology for the NFT space, we’re sort of what you would call antagonistic or mean Tech where we we have a very short one liner concepts. And then we just go build IKs, web 2.0 and 3.0 experiences around them. A lot of fun. It’s a whole lot of fun. I’ve worked in traditional software development and marketing for years and years and years, and really feel inspired and at home, in the NFT space, it makes me feel liberated, to be able to create and express myself in really, really strange and immersive ways.

george grombacher 1:39
Nice. All right. So inspired and liberated to express yourself in in immersive, strange ways. Give me an example.

Unknown Speaker 1:51
An example is just what we’re doing right now with the technology. I mean, users in listeners might not know that NF T’s are built on things called smart contracts. And these are, these are pretty much pieces of financial programming that allow you to just kind of set the terms of an economy and FPS the reason that they’re there so that they can be sold and bought the way that they are. Because they’re essentially backed by a digital certificate of authenticity that says you’re the person that has it. So that right there is like on the surface really cool tech. But we go beyond that. Now. We make NF T’s that change in React and do different things based on different jokes, different conditions, or just different holidays. So that’s, that’s really where we kind of sit in our positioning is kind of blazing the path of dynamic and morphing. NFCs if you would.

george grombacher 2:47
Nice. Yeah, it is a it is a brave new world where I think he’s kind of scratch your head and you realize we’re just kind of scratching the surface. I don’t know if that was a pun or just just kind of bad wordplay. So you said that they change and react based on things and you said holidays. Can you give me an example of that?

Unknown Speaker 3:07
For sure, for sure. The blaze Katz is a great example. It’s a project that we have under our wing. That is pretty much all charity focus. So every dime that comes in off the secondary sales of that all go towards Mental Health America, which is an awesome charity. Now changing by events with the blaze cats, we we brought our in house artist, he goes by specialist and in the company and anti crash bound by night to do generative Halloween costumes based off of 25 different Halloween characters. So each one of the blaze cats were able to get a unique Halloween costume on Halloween. And all the users had to do was go refresh their cat. And it went from a regular cat to some scary amalgamation of Halloween terror. So things like that you’d have Christmas things that are very similar coming up. I don’t wanna say Christmas. We have holiday, winter holiday season things because we’re definitely not going to focus specifically on Christmas or we certainly have a bunch of it’s all dynamic. It’s so cool.

george grombacher 4:13
Okay, nice. So a blaze cat is an NFT that I can purchase. And when I own it, it it is not static. If I wish to get my cat in a new outfit for whatever’s going on in the world. If it’s if it’s if it’s Halloween or if it’s Kwanzaa I can refresh it and all of a sudden, the creator yell have made a new outfit for for my cat and so it’s visually no different.

Unknown Speaker 4:42
Well, to expand on that, that right there is what we were calling the dynamic fts. And now what we have is a whole new thing that goes even crazier that they’re called Quantum NF T’s so you as the user if you just bought said Blaze cat, not only would you be able to have that Halloween costume, but On your listing, you’d be able to toggle back and forth between your regular cat, your Halloween cat, your winter holiday cat. And you’re also able to apply filters, which are like overlay images to make your cat do cool things. It sounds like just like standard common practice thing that an NF T should do. But we’re actually the first that are doing a lot of these things that I’m mentioning. So it’s really neat to kind of mold and shape that tech that just hasn’t even been conceptualized yet. It’s it’s pretty neat.

george grombacher 5:28
Yeah, for sure. And what is it that makes in this example, Blaze cat value?

Unknown Speaker 5:36
Oh, the another value is only the only value is another person’s willingness to buy it at a price for sure. You’ll see a theme in our projects that we don’t really focus too much on that because we don’t want to kind of tread insecurities territories, first of all, but we also don’t want to assert value. So we promote responsible collecting, a lot of the industry does revolve around almost a gambling esque attitude of like, am I going to pull a rare one, I’m going to flip in, I’m going to get some money. We traditionally across all of our dozen or so projects that we have, don’t cater to these crowds as much. We have tech that’s bleeding edge. And it will take a long time for adoption to really turn their heads and say, Okay, this is sort of where we want to be so cognizant of that. value and price and things like that. The only price that we’re concerned with is making sure that our entry point is always affordable to anybody that’s trying to get in so they can come into the experience, have fun with our tech. If they decide to sell it, that’s fine. But we are we’re not a value focused brand. We’re very much an experience focused brand.

george grombacher 6:44
Nice, very cool. So my brain, I imagine it’s probably like many other people’s brains want to try to connect it to something that’s already in existence to make sense of it. And he talked about people are interested in in in polling, a rare, a rare one. Kinda like if I’m buying sports cards or whatever baseball cards I’m hoping for that that elusive rookie card or that LeBron James rookie card if I’m trying to buy old NBA cards could could I like in blaze cats to buying a a set of baseball cards, or am I way off base except the baseball card or in this example, the place cat is constantly changing. If I wanted to.

Unknown Speaker 7:39
Know I would say that buying an NF T is very much like buying a baseball card or any other kind of collectible. Our doji crew and FTS, which are like a space themed NF T series that are all organically spray painted generative art are really neat as well. Those are very much like trading cards because we’ve actually built in a first of its kind revealed mechanism that allows users to go in and reveal the NFT themselves. So typically, you’ll have a placeholder animation overtop of your NSTF if you purchased and then you’re at the mercy of the Creator to go ahead and run the update to show everybody what NF t they purchased. With doji crew, we decided to put the power into the collectors hands and make a reveal process that’s entirely user controllable. So they could choose to never reveal if they’d like or they could reveal and at which point they even get the renamed their NF T’s. Once again, kind of really, really reaching for the the dynamic and customizable NFT niche.

george grombacher 8:44
Nice. So y’all are y’all are masters for lack of a better term of the technology of NFT. But you’re also creating it creating your own.

Unknown Speaker 8:56
Correct very much so vary day by day. We’re like every bit of tech that we’re really pioneering are things that we’ve conceptualized and built on our own. These customizable cats that reveal processes, and even things that we’re rolling out to, or other properties like space bloggers and island boys. And there’s so many weird and nice things that we’ve done that are all built upon upon proprietary and bespoke technology that we’re building as a brand.

george grombacher 9:22
Nice. Alright, cool. So are are are you simply an AI? That’s that that’s the wrong word? Are you are you scratching your creative itch? are you responding to a need and a demand? Is it all of the above?

Unknown Speaker 9:45
I think I think definitely all of the above and as far as responding to a need in the brand. To put things in perspective, our company we own and control over I think 10 to $15 million worth of intellectual property. This isn’t necessarily just like a small thing that we’re just like kind of scratching the surface Sure, satisfy the demand. There’s huge demand. And there’s huge demand for more because people want avatars to represent them, or they want NF T’s that they resonate with very much. So as you want a piece of art that resonates on your wall. So I would say very, very, very, very much. So there’s demand. And there’s a there’s people that are very, very ingrained in this industry.

george grombacher 10:31
Nice. I love it. I think it’s super exciting. So you mentioned you said that people want an avatar. Tell me more about I appreciate what that means. But are they using the NF T’s you’re creating as as their avatar?

Unknown Speaker 10:49
Yeah, absolutely. And not just the NF T’s that we’re creating. But that’s, that’s kind of the current trend. That’s, that’s, I guess, we would say just just just kind of reached the top was the avatar culture. So we saw that began years ago with crypto punks. They were really the first NFT avatars out there. And then like we see things like this year’s board APR club, that are pictures that are kind of either personified animals or just humanoid creatures or whatever, what have you that work well as social media avatars. And that that right there? You’ll you’ll hear when you start dipping your feet into the industry, that people were wondering, well, what utility does this have? What utility does that have come by utilities? Like, what does this do? What do we have it just separate this from just being a currency? And a lot of them, a lot of people will say the ultimate avatar, or the ultimate utility is its ability to be used as an avatar, which is why crypto punks are so sought after is so valuable, because they’re immediately recognizable. They look good on the squint, which means they they get when you scale them down. They look great, just as good as they do scaled up. And like I said, they’re just unique. They’re a great representation. There’s, there’s very good inclusion. So there’s someone for everybody in there. And yeah, that’s that’s the avatar, culture, culture and the direct to Avatar culture that people are starting to really build towards. And you’ll see like gated experiences, where if you don’t have this NFT or a collection from this NFT you can’t now get into physical locations, let alone like just digital gating. So it’s neat. It’s for I keep saying it’s neat, but it is it’s novel. Well, it’s starting to be very pervasive into real life, and it’s something that will be here for a while.

george grombacher 12:32
Yeah, there’s no doubt. Okay, so I was gonna say I totally get it but I don’t totally get it. Rog but I’m definitely getting it. Gated experiences. That’s that’s a whole nother level.

Unknown Speaker 12:48
That’s that’s the, that’s the bread and butter for me. Like, that’s what, that’s really what Gary Vee like kind of jumped into the space sort of pioneering with his difference. His big utility, or his his big thing that his NF T’s do is provide access. So they will get you access to his conventions, so we’ll get you access to calls with him. And he’s really built up this economy of access, it’s really interesting to look out for. And that’s just one of the things that you can get an MFT to do and that’s, that’s direct access. That’s in real life. You’re meeting Gary Vee this this this person. But then there’s things like discord servers, which are like Slack, Slack channels or slack, Slack servers for bigger nerds. And essentially, you could gate those servers, which means like, you could say, like, you cannot access either the whole server or parts of the server, unless you own this NFT and it’s verified in your wallet. So that kind of really goes up against the a right click savers are that I can screenshot your NFT Well, that’s great. But you won’t, that screenshot is not going to provide you access to any of the web zones that are locked out to non owners. It’s not going to get you into any of the parties that are being thrown with big celebrities and big music and there’s there’s little festivals happening around these things that you’re just kind of bubbling up right now. And this the whole kind of tangent, the antagonize but the right click Save thing kind of gets offended at that point because you realize, okay that that only has extent, you can use it as your profile picture that’s the owner isn’t really going to be upset. Because you don’t get their access. You don’t get that utility you’ll get that gated experience that we kind of open this up with.

george grombacher 14:36
I love it. Again, my brain is trying to bring it back to something that it understands it’s like a backstage pass. It is a key. It is giving you that access. cool to have it as your avatar that very much is and that you’re getting all this additional stuff. And the only way that you’re getting it is if you are the verified The owner and the contract is what verifies that?

Unknown Speaker 15:06
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s just the you, you put it perfectly. And that’s, I think that really once people start understanding that point, they realize that, okay, these things do have value that the avatars cool, the picture is cool, we love the pictures. But at the end of the day, it’s what’s what’s given to these pictures, the value going back the board, apes is a great example. Since their release, they’ve released The Kennel Club, the mutant serum, which you can give to your board, ape, and it would make another board eight, but he’s all mangled and mute mutated. And then, like the Munich Yacht Club, which is if you were owned, aboard ape, you just got it like you were able to get it. And those things are now going for, like seven, eight Etherium, I believe, which which is 10s of 1000s of dollars, for they just purchasing one of these apes. So that’s, that’s the the ability. So they’re the right click savers, the people who’ve just screenshotted, whatever, that’s fine. But you’re not repeatedly being AirDrop literal salaries of NFP collectibles that you’re able to either hold or sell or do whatever. And it’s, it’s mostly liquid. And like, especially with the board apes, like, it’s not hard to sell a mute Nate, I’ve sold about $40,000 worth of them this month.

george grombacher 16:25
Nice. And so as the as the creator of the NFT, you, you have the ability to every time that it gets sold in the secondary market, for lack of a better term, you the Creator have the opportunity to make revenue on that. Therefore, you have the incentive to continue to make better funner funner. More fun, better community experiences.

Unknown Speaker 16:57
For sure, for sure, I want to walk that back a little bit. Because it’s platform specific, some platforms will honor the royalties, some platforms don’t some platforms will honor another platforms, royalties, some platforms don’t. It’s not a standard on Ethereum, or most of the blockchains. But there are proposals to make that a part. So it would be a full thing. And then I guess that might be getting into the weeds a little bit unnecessarily. But it is important to point out that even though that is one of the huge benefits that orders artists can consistently receive royalties, each time that trades hands is long as it’s on the correct platform, that that’s not a native NFT feature, that’s a it’s more of a platform specific thing at this current point.

george grombacher 17:46
John, it interesting.

Unknown Speaker 17:49
Your point, though, it’s definitely like something that you do like is that keeps creators continually adding value to the products because you’re incentivized to do so if they’ve activated royalties on their collections, the obvious way to keep those royalties coming in is to keep your community happy. So it’s your works

george grombacher 18:10
and and it gives you the opportunity to really second editions or third editions and because the and that will I imagine that that will make the originals even more valuable. And your as a creator as the artist, however you want to refer to yourself. And you know, and maybe I’m off base, but that would be the incentive to to continue to create events and experiences and things like that.

Unknown Speaker 18:42
Absolutely, absolutely. Just driving up demand and then each time they change over I mean, that’s realistically the rest of your life kind of salary if you have one of these projects that you’re really continually giving back to the community. The community will reward that and keep you involved by just keep moving that market

george grombacher 19:02
fascinating. Very cool. Very cool rug. Well the people are ready for that difference making tip sir, what do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 19:13
I think the difference making tip and the biggest thing that I can put out there is Don’t search for things let things find you and that kind of goes into like a the secret manifestation we’re almost thinking but it really works out like the second you really stop frantically searching for something that normally bumps you right in the face. And that that scales upwards. That’s probably the best advice I’ve ever received. And that’s the my boiler plate advice that I give people.

george grombacher 19:40
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. Run. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Unknown Speaker 19:52
Um, I would have to ask that you go ahead and check out rug dot tech. That’s going to be and that’s that’s the website there’s no.com.io Anything like that is run duck tech paid a lot of money for that domain so it could use a little bit of your traffic. We if you’re interested in getting into NF TS or anything like that, we are a brand that offers free smart contracts free web three etc. If you don’t know what that is we’re more than happy to tell you Don’t be afraid by the brand were a little bit aggressive but it’s more of a a meanie thing in this place more so more than we are actually the asshole that we appear to be on that page, which you guys check out rug dot tech rug underscore tech on Twitter. And yeah, I’m just really happy to be on here. Really happy to start getting the word out. Thank you for having me.

george grombacher 20:39
Yeah, for sure. It was a pleasure. And I could certainly vouch that when I went and visited rug dot tech I was I was immediately bemused by by the mildly aggressive nature and language and I knew that we were going to have a good conversation today. So if you enjoyed this as much as I did, so rug your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to rug dot tech and check out everything that we’ve been talking about and and learn all about this. This really really cool new space. Thanks good. Yep, no problem and I hope to get and until next time, keep fighting the good fight as we’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai