Podcast notes – Overpriced JPEGs – guest Tim Ferriss: “Assume there’s always a market for quality in any medium — and just get fucking great”

Guest: Tim Ferriss
Host: Carly Reilly (w/ Bankless)

“The way you do anything is how you do everything”

Experimented with NFTs for last 2 years

Describes himself as writer or podcaster to unfamiliar people

Very competitive person – wants to suffer a little

Cockpunch – origin story
-Started w/ desire to be less precious about creative projects, looking for joy and fun and laughter
Likes playing with new technology sandboxes
-Was drawing characters with gauntlets – the name Cockpunch popped into his mind
-Lets him play with 3d modeling, rigging, voice acting, music – lets him acquire skills that can be transferred to other places – vehicle for learning

AI art competition
-entrants had to show their work
-based on Cockpunch characters
-teaching himself – and then teach others

Chose fiction to let himself focus less on metrics, a “quantitative prison”

“Most people who want feedback…want positive reinforcement”

In any new space, tries to find someone with 10K foot view across many projects to get advice

Lots of folks get lost in weeds with NFTs / web3

Decided on 5555 mints – wanted to make sure it sells out

“There are a lot of whiny bitches in web3”

Likes advice of Scott Adams (Dilbert creator)
Thinks in terms of 6 month projects and 2 week experiments
Snowball of relationships and skills from project to project

Created term “Emergent Long Fiction”
Fiction lets him learn from new people
Set a few conditions upfront – a few characters, realms, drivers
There’s competitive games
But where it goes from here – he doesn’t necessarily know (hence “emergent”)

Set constraints and explore how creative you can be

Most people don’t know what they want

Hard to get clear signal when you ask a large audience what they want

Bullish on tokenized assets and digital scarcity

Been thru many cycles of tech
Always some new tool / platform that people say you have to use (eg, Vine)
“Assume there’s always a market for quality in any medium — and just get fucking great

Web3 isn’t going away
But NFTs – he doesn’t know – it’s one of the meanest most aggressive communities

In this bear market, he’s down 70% net worth – but it doesn’t entitle him to behave like an asshole

Public perception of NFTs (in his audience) has soured tremendously – like a dirty word
But he likes to cull his audience from time to time if they don’t have patience or understanding

Cockpunch as an unlock has exceeded all his expectations – relationships, what he’s learning

Fiction doesn’t always mean a novel – it means story telling
Didn’t plan to do a Discord – it self-organized
In Discord – use your Cockpunch NFTs, with attributes – uses ChatGPT to write a match summary (blow by blow) of a cock fight
Others added music, voice commentary

// stopped taking notes after ~1 hour

Recent Twitter threads – Worldcoin, Metaverse, Balaji, Zoltan Poszar, and Doodles

I’ve been posting podcast notes directly to Twitter in an effort to grow my following. So far I’d give it a straight B as a marketing tactic.

Anyway here are the threads I’ve shared the past week — all podcast notes.

Worldcoin CEO on Epicenter podcast:

Legendary game designer Raph Koster talking about metaverse:

Balaji on the Farnam Street podcast:

…and part 2

Zoltan Poszar on Odd Lots talking about Bretton Woods 3

Doodles founder poopie on Overpriced JPEGs podcast

Podcast notes: NFT news with Overpriced Jpegs and guest Supermassive

guest SuperMassive – head of video at Defiant, covers crypto / web3
20 years as filmmaker

Glut of NFT stuff today, compared to when Bored Apes launched

Macro is deeply uncertain right now

NFT volume has dropped, but top projects haven’t fallen much – Mutants, Karafuru

Carly likes using Dappradar to track projects
SM uses Watchtower (paid app)

Some trends
Emergence of manga / anime style (Azuki)
Evolution of what’s considered “blue chip” (Artifact)

Vtubing trend – using avatar that tracks your movements in eg, Zoom calls
Opportunity to translate NFT into vtube scaffold
Can still emote / behave as yourself in metaverse but look like character

Recent explosion in Asian art / themes – CloneX (Murakami), Karafuru (comes from Indonesia), Azuki (anime style art)

Damien Hirst’s Dots – blue chip moment – price has dropped

7yo son and 9yo daughter, get their feedback on which NFTs – they liked Azukis

MFers – Bankless likes them, growing interest in NFTs

8000eth Punk sale – Deepak.eth bought it (CEO of Chain)
Has spent $31M on mutants, serums, and this punk
Also bought the M3 serum (!)
Took Compound loan to pay for it
Self promotional

We will label people as ape owners but not Tesla owners – that’s bizarre and interesting

NFTs have more tangible ownership value than shitcoins – and harder to sell so more hodling
NFT space is making up its own rules now

X2Y2 airdrop – wasn’t that valuable, had early issues so paused airdrop
LooksRare volume dropping, lot of it was wash trading, falling rewards

We’re all waiting for Coinbase NFT marketplace

Also NYSE doing an NFT marketplace too – what will it look like?

New stat that # of US people who hold crypto > # of US people who have a savings account (!?)

Will be an international arms race for stablecoins, crypto products

Carly works with Andrew Yang on his new Lobby3 initiative – anti-poverty benefits of crypto and web3
“if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”

Disney hired tech exec Mike White to lead metaverse strategy – taking it seriously
More confident Disney can do it than Facebook

Lens Protocol to build social apps
Possible future where writing good comments = NFT = can become collateral for buying a house

Lots of citizen policing in this space – community sorts it out – but media always prefers talking about the rugs

SM’s two exciting projects – Cyberbrokers (respected artist) and Aku collection (former MLB player)

Podcast notes: Doodles founder Poopie on Overpriced JPEGs (how to build a blue chip NFT brand)

Poopie (Jordan) – Doodles founder, “product person”

2012 – Bitcoin and Doge communities, built a futures / predictions market
Got hacked, then saw MT Gox hack too

2017 – Cryptokitties took him by surprise – open, can build on it
Made Kittycalc – optimize kitty traits – did it with Topshot cofounder, got interest from Roham
Joined Cryptokitties, worked on Topshot

2021 – talked to Evan, left Dapper to do an NFT project, met burnttoast
Realized they were building a brand

Hypebeast interview – why success?
3 pieces – Community + Artwork + Values (?)
Intentional early in talking to supporters, voice chats
Set right values – eg, don’t talk about floor price
Have rituals – like “pass the rainbow” game
Avoid speculation eg, 1 Doodle = 1 Doodle

at 1100 Discord members, locked it and disabled invites as an experiment – but doesn’t like that trend now of exclusivity and whitelists etc

CryptoKitties lessons —
figuring out collector motivations, and personas
eg, they like to breed things in real life
3 big chapters in CK story – China launch; Steph Curry;

China launch – collaborating with phone OEM to have CryptoKitties mobile app installed – insane expectation of growth; people collecting lucky Chinese numbers, lots of hype, but it fizzled out

3 tracks for Doodles product
1. NFT track
2. consumer goods
3. live events
Each track should cross pollinate
Advisors in each track

Space Doodles is next big release

in 5 years, wanna be Peanuts (Charles Schulz) and 10 years, Disney

want to test and try things, don’t care too much about eg Netflix deal
have community, fans, don’t need to do traditional route

Looking for strategic partners – new hires, advisors
Can easily do 8-figure drop, but not in a rush

8 people on team – technically all contractors

Rather go direct instead of through brokers / intermediaries – eg, to merch manufacturers (in JV style), or animation studios

Nate Alex joining as smart contract advisor (ChainFaces Arena)

How to reach 1M people?
“Cop out answer is merch”

Web3 – transparency, trustlessness – important to share those values

“Art is the hook”

Only 5800 holders

Goals:
1. Have fiat onramps (credit card purchasing)
2. Slick native experience (not Metamask)
3. Build at scale

Cross-licensing Doodles to create derivatives, lets hodlers bootstrap businesses and new collections – which would grow brand but not dilute core Doodles

Deadheads – stake into casting pool, can be cast into shows and new IP

Wrapped NFTs – started with CryptoKitties
Wrapped Doodles will change its look – Space Doodles – and can unwrap
Non dilutive to supply
Only one version can exist at a time – how will this affect supply on OpenSea
Wrap Doodle to play games, enter metaverse, change look

Very intentional to be centralized, but could give back control to community in future
Looking closely at Nouns, Meebits DAO

Northstar vision: Get brand in front of millions

Put to community to approve hires, spend Doodle Bank funds

Doodle Bank – 2K+ subscribed to Snapshot (for proposals voting)
Anyone can share a proposal, vet and develop good ones, and then put to a vote
Passed proposals – expanding team; funding artists for derivatives

Half of royalties go to Doodle Bank, half to founders – but none go to the Doodles LLC (a mistake they’re trying to fix)

Learned a lot from Bored Apes’ permissive license – easy to give more rights, but hard to take away

Open to extending license, cross-licensing – but want to see the proposals / potential partners

Meebits – commercialization up to $100K

Future is multichain – ETH for rich; another chain should rise for entertainment / NFTs

Interested in hand drawn NFT collections
Loved one project, found out its anon dev is his friend!

How to suss a project: Look at roadmap, how feasible it is, not overpromise
Be very careful what you say – words do matter

Team, art, community
Look at their experience
Ask “Where do you see this in 5, 10 years?”