Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
DRONE ON explores how drones are reshaping the world. Hosted by Bryce Bladon, the podcast documents the tech, economics and people piloting the world's largest standardized drone imagery network.
Bryce Bladon: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to DRONE ON, the only podcast in the air and on the airwaves. I'm your host, Bryce Bladon and today's industry news report. According to industry analysis from Messari, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, AKA "DePINs" have a market cap at about 50 billion in 2024. They are projecting this to grow to 3.5 trillion by 2028.
"DePIN" is a term used to describe crypto projects tied to physical infrastructure, which brings us to today's topic. Crypto Meets Drones. I am joined by the operations manager at Spexi, Graham Anderson. Graham, tell us, uh, how you got into drones and perhaps what it is you do.
Graham Anderson: Yeah, absolutely.
Guest Introduction: Graham Anderson, Ops Manager @ Spexi
---
Graham Anderson: Uh, my name is Graham, as Bryce said, operations manager here at Spexi for the last two and a half years coming up on three years. Pretty early on from, you know, at the time when, when what was Spexi Geospatial decided to go into crypto [00:01:00] and, and I have an interesting sort of merger story or merger experience of.
Both my professional, you know, career and then my, my hobbies, uh, interestingly enough, so I have been in drones since about 2018, 2019. I was actually living in South America at the time. A friend there had a DJI Spark, a little drone, and, and we took it out. One day he was gonna show me about, you know, show me his drone, which I thought was really cool.
And I, I had not realized the sort of leaps and bounds that the drone technology, the drone industry, had made between kind of 2013, 14, and 2018 and how, how good they had become. I was just sort of, my jaw hit the floor. I went even, even though at this point of spark doesn't seem like that amazing, uh, a piece of technology at the time, I, I went, wow, these are, are much better than I had imagined.
Much easier to fly, much more sort of user-friendly than I had envisioned. And I, I, why aren't they more prolific? Why isn't everybody using these for all sorts of things? I could just imagine so many value propositions and so many ways that they could be used. So immediately my. Brain started turning on like, you know, business ideas.
Do you get into training? Do you get into, how do you, [00:02:00] how do you sort of bring drones to more people because they're such a cool and valuable tool. And at the same time, I, I, you know, we had planned as a family to move back to Canada. We were living, you know, living in South America for years. So I started looking around Vancouver where we were planning to move and, and reaching out to people there, sort of trying to understand how the drone space worked.
And landed a, a job at a small drone services provider in vancouver prior to, to returning. So basically immediately upon my return, started in a, a business development role in the drone space in 2019, because none of us really knew all of the value propositions, I, I sort of had to give myself a crash course in GIS and geomatics and in infrastructure inspection and in, you know, city of municipal works and in, you know, v visual media and advertising and marketing because the gentleman that owned the company had, you know, eight or 10 drones of different sizes and specifications. And he had recently invested in a LIDAR unit. So drone lidar at the time was, was sort of new and just hitting the, the industry. And I got to learn a whole bunch about what all of that is. [00:03:00] So that was my journey into the drone space. And at the same time I had been hobbying and dabbling in the cryptocurrency space, um, in, you know, in my after hours.
Life from, you know, everything from, you know, buying into Bitcoin and ICO craze in, in mid to late 2017. Um, and then on into to NFTs. And so I was doing drones by day and I was doing sort of crypto by night as time went on. And in 2020, I think 2022, when I saw the round fundraise announcement from Spexi. I read it and I went, I, I get it.
I get the whole thing, right? I know drones, I know data. I know the value proposition. I understand why, you know, why deep end, uh, might be a, a really smart way to do this. Um, so that was my, my merger, my journey and, and how I kind of aimed to see Spexi as a perfect fit for my professional and, and personal interests.
Bryce Bladon: You hit the topic on the head there. You went from learning about acronyms like GIS, to combining them with all the fun [00:04:00] crypto acronyms of stuff like NFTs and ICOs. But that brings us to today, and that brings us to what you do at Spexi.
Today's episode: why do drones benefit from the blockchain or crypto?
---
Bryce Bladon: And perhaps the best way to start this is with that basic question, why does drone anything need crypto and the blockchain. Why would drone data benefit from this? Why is it any sort of opportunity or is it even an opportunity? You, you haven't heard an ICO in about six or seven years. Uh, so has, maybe, maybe that's something to tell us about the nature of the crypto industry.
Graham Anderson: Well, yeah. I'm actually was starting the drone industry for that one, interestingly enough.
And so as I was doing business development in the, in the drone space, we would sell data products, GIS imagery products to engineering firms or, you know, a variety of, of end users and they would often love the data product that we would sell. And then they would immediately say, great. You know, we were working in the lower mainland across British Columbia a little bit.
And then they'd go, great, we have our next project in Winnipeg. Can you essentially offer the same service in Winnipeg? Mm-hmm. And we would say, well, yes, but it's gonna triple the price because now we have to move people [00:05:00] and equipment and and things to Winnipeg, or we have to find. A subcontracting service provider in Winnipeg that has the same, you know, or similar equipment and capabilities and knowledge.
And so one issue that was sort of holding the drone industry back from really expanding and really taking off was that it was very difficult to scale across large geographies. And so, actually the thing that I really noticed about the seed round, uh, news, you know, news press release was, oh, that's an unlock for this issue that we have for.
Being unable to scale for the scout challenge of scale that we're seeing in the drone industry. Using a decentralized network, using a network of pilots that are running standardized equipment, basically taking a lot of the, the ad hocness out of, out of the drone space is an unlock for, for scalability.
And so I realized. That I hope I realized something, something early. I said, that's a really smart way to, to solve this problem in the drone space. And I was familiar, you know, with helium, with hive mapper, with some of the deep ends. And so I understood [00:06:00] the concept in a way, and I went, I think that concept could be applied to the drone space.
So drones themselves, the individual drone, the data collection does not need the blockchain. It does not need cryptocurrency. What can leverage. Blockchain technology very well is building a community around, uh, a standardized process and a standardized data product, and rewarding and incentivizing that community appropriately for, you know, the efforts they're putting in or their time or their, their contributions to the network.
Bryce Bladon: Yeah, that's well said. I, I want you to dig into that, uh, that question you sort of answered there, which is how this solves the, the scalability challenge. Um, and I'm just gonna give a little context on something you referenced, which is Helium. It's a decentralized wireless network and it provides a long range connectivity for internet of things devices, and it's often referred to as the original, uh, DePIN pioneer.
Again, that's that crypto term for, uh, physical infrastructure that is decentralized, and I think decentralized might be part of the answer to the question I'm asking around. [00:07:00] So how does this solve for scale? Like what Spexi does, uh, right now is pays pilots basically, um, to fly ad hoc missions in areas as demand customers come up and, you know, a gross oversimplification perhaps.
But, uh, that's roughly the, the model, right?
Graham Anderson: Yeah. The, the real unlock that, that, um, people, it takes a second for people to maybe get to sometimes, is that what Spexi offers is actually a standardized data product. And so what Spexi offers is no matter where right now in North America, but, but hypothetically and, and theoretically in the world, a a client wants that data product, they will get the same thing regardless of, of location and, and where they're, you know, where the, and operator, because Spexi takes all of the possibilities...
It could be a different type of drone. It could be a different type of camera lens. It could be a different type of deliverable or data product and says, no, no, we're getting rid of that. It's a very small, specific type of drones. It's a very standardized camera set. And then it's a very same deliverable, much more like a [00:08:00] satellite.
A satellite goes around the earth and it just collects imagery over and over and over again. So, you know. Groups like Maxar or or Planet Labs have a bunch of satellites out there. They're going around the world, they're collecting imagery, and when a client comes and asks for imagery, there's like three things they can buy, you know, because that's what the array of satellites can offer historically.
Typically in the drone industry, there was a lot of, we can do everything. If want Lidar, we'll give you lidar. You want thermo, we'll give you thermo. You want ortho, we'll give you an ortho. You wanna make it an advertisement or a commercial, we'll help you do that. And so drone operators tried to be everything to everyone and that's very difficult.
Obviously you, you know, it's difficult to understand everyone's industry, difficult to provide all things to, to all people. And so successful drone operators I found, got into a niche. And they said, I'm really good at, or we're really good at this service. And, and, and if a different request comes in, you know, maybe we sub it out, maybe we, we can help facilitate it.
Or maybe we just say we don't do that. And so what Spexi I think unlocks is this is the data product Spexi offers. Right? And it's valuable across a lot of industries for a lot of use cases. [00:09:00] But if someone asks for, uh, thermal inspection of a solar farm, we don't do that. Spexi isn't trying to solve that problem, right?
Spexi has a data product that is high resolution imagery at scale across broad areas of interests, and it's the same wherever you, you sort of order it or, or would like to access it.
Bryce Bladon: Interesting. So one part of the Spexi model there, I do think I need to be absolutely clear on, is it sounds like the, the demand side of the business, the data and how it's sold, continues as is.
But what does this mean for the people actually flying these missions? Like what does crypto do for them in any capacity, if anything at all? Is the overlap of crypto and drones securing the data? Does it do anything else? Does it enable anything else? Uh, is there more of a reason for all of this?
What does crypto "do" for the network? For pilots?
---
Graham Anderson: Yeah, it's kind of a three, three party and sort of three main reasons why, you know, why crypto is useful or why the blockchain unlocks, uh, aspects that maybe weren't unlocked by an individual service provider.
Payment is an obvious one. So if you're trying to build a global network of pilots, it can be costly and or difficult and or impossible [00:10:00] to remit wire pay set up. You know, how, how do we take, you know, right now, hundreds, maybe, maybe low thousands of pilots, but foreseeably, 10, 15, 20,000 pilots all contributing to the network and then try to pay them.
You, you've got, you know, you, you're gonna have different currencies, you're gonna have different, you know, bank banking systems. You're gonna have to maybe set up legal and tax entities in a variety of locations. So that's a real challenge from a business perspective. And so blockchain becomes an unlock for that.
Um, from a a pilot community perspective, there's an opportunity to share, um, decision making, right? To create something like a dao, something like a governance structure whereby the, the community gets to decide what they think will be the most valuable data products, what they think will be the the next best place to expand to or unlock. And some of that decision making gets passed onto the community and sort of gets knowledge crowdsourced a little bit. And then decisions get to be made within the community and within the, the holders or owners of, of that, that token, that layered drone is, is playing to launch.
And the third is, is the data provenance. [00:11:00] So, you know, if anyone that's spent time in crypto maybe went through the NFT craze, anyone that didn't spend time in crypto might have a very, you know, a negative, somewhat perception of NFTs. But the NFT technology. The underlying technology is essentially the ability to stamp something original or legitimate on the internet, right?
So it's, it's, yes, the picture might be copy pastable, but the providence, the originality of that data can be verified. And so one thing that Spexi is unlocking is the ability for 10,000 drone pilots to all submit. To collect and submit data from unique locations and Spexi to be able to stamp that data as the original data collected at the time and place that it was said to have been collected so that a data buyer knows that they're getting data that has not been altered or tampered with or, or spoofed or faked, and it's original data from.
From that place and time that they're requesting it. So is that three good reasons that the blockchain sort of unlocks the ability to, to scale and network in this way?
Bryce Bladon: Yeah, I think, uh, I think you did a good job answering what was, uh, many questions, guys kind of smashed together [00:12:00] for you. One interesting thing about this DePIN space for me at least, is uh, little bit of context on my professional experiences.
The DePIN challenge Spexi overcame: hardware makes things harder
---
Bryce Bladon: I've been working primarily in internet companies, let's call them for 20 years. And the main motivation there is that there are very few physical products typically tied to it. As soon as there's hardware, you need to either produce, sell, leverage, whatever, everything becomes 10 times harder in my mind. If I make a living from a blog, I don't need a storefront, I don't need, uh, to send mail. I don't need, yada, yada, yada.
But once we start talking about drones and data and the cloud and blockchain, the stakes are a lot higher and it's a lot harder. And this to my mind, speaks to how a Spexi has been around since 2018. Uh, it's been seven years since then. And they've actually been leveraging blockchain this entire time, uh, at least as part of the, uh, open beta to basically secure their data provenance, if that's, lemme know if that's correct.
What I'm building up to is it's relatively easy to make money creating something digital. [00:13:00] Or even crypto. But once you combine that with the physical aspect, hardware, literal people having to go out and do things on behalf of it, there's far fewer margins, uh, for things to go wrong. Um, the stakes are real, to put it another way.
So I guess one of my questions would be like, what are the elements for, for success? How does the drone industry and the crypto opportunity meet in the middle? Like, what are the, the key elements? Uh, here, and if you don't have an answer, I kind of do.
Graham Anderson: Okay. Uh, I, I, I would like to hear your answer to that question and then see if I can play off of that or maybe fill in a gap or a hole.
Bryce Bladon: Sure. Lemme kick you off. Uh, and this is gonna be driven by a lot of personal experience and, uh, opinions. But first and foremost, real utility. So, I had my first success in crypto way back in 2017. Spexi has been operating as a business that entire time. That little silly NFT thing exists as a project, but the utility, I'm not sure is necessarily there anymore. Likewise, uh, everything we've been talking about here and everything crypto [00:14:00] promises to do, I think it does come down to incentives. I think this is the nature of any effective business. What is it, Charles Munger, who always says, always look for the incentives.
And I think he's absolutely right When I wanna talk about all the things I hate about crypto and there are more than a few, I just need to look at the incentives that empower bad actors. And, uh, when I look at successes in this space, I look at what are they doing to incentivize what you actually want and doing to protect against it?
And this does bring me to my last thing and the one that I probably have the most grating experience on, which is regulatory compliance. Uh, fun little fact about me was I was working with, uh, security regulators out here in, uh, uh, sunny BC Canada way back in 2017, um, to basically conceptualize what this thing is we were making in crypto and what it would mean for, uh, for securities.
Is it a security? All these other things. But when I look at successful companies, helium, uh, GEODNET, GEODNET, I never, I'm quite sure how to say them.
Graham Anderson: Um, I think "GEODNET".
Bryce Bladon: Okay. That makes sense. That [00:15:00] makes sense. A lot of these crypto companies I only ever see, uh, written, but when I look at what made them successful, what they actually have, what they're doing.
Utility, it's incentives, uh, community incentives. I would even qualify it further. And regulatory compliance, which is probably the one that I most want to bang my head up against because so few projects seem to actually take it seriously. I'll leave it there. Is there anything you'd correct with what I said?
Technologies like drones and crypto go through waves
---
Graham Anderson: No, I think all technologies go through, you know, and this is not, not my novel idea, they go through a sort of a, you've seen the wave, you know, kind of the. The excitement of early adopters, and this was, is both crypto, the industry as a whole, individual crypto technologies or blockchain technologies like NFTs, you know, they go through this hype of, Hey, we created this new thing but we don't really know how to use it or, or get value from it.
And drones did the same, right? Drones is a technology, Hey, we've got this cool thing that's very usable now. Right? And, and everybody, sort of... not everybody, a group of people climb on board and think that they're gonna change the world immediately with it. And often they're, they're smacked in the face [00:16:00] fairly hard by the, the, the regulatory and the real world aspects of, of putting, you know, of changing industries, of changing minds, of getting those technologies to a place where they are mature enough and useful enough and people really understand the concept of them. So a great example is NFTs, right? You, you got in them 2017, they were still very niche. 2020, 2021, they sort of blew up. They were all over the news and Bloomberg and everyone was talking about million dollar pictures of apes and all sorts of things. The idea behind the picture wasn't the picture. Right. And, and anyone in the space sort of realized, Hmm, that's not the value. The value is in that ability to track ownership and trade and move things around on, in a digital world and increasingly digital world, right? And to be able to say "that's mine" on the internet has a, has a value it, it's not a million dollars for a picture that that was, you know, that wasn't right.
And, and you know, a similar thing happened with drones. Everyone went bigger and bigger. I'm gonna build [00:17:00] the biggest drone. Like it's, it, it's gonna be an airplane. It's like, well, that's an airplane and we already have that. Right? The, the value of drones, it took a time for the industry to sort of develop the technology to a point where it worked, but also figure out how they were gonna fit in with airplanes and helicopters and, and the airspace.
So both industries have gone through like a similar journey, almost in, in, in unison in a similar period of time. And what I see that Spexi saw, the, the, the management of Spexi saw, the team that Spexi saw was drones are getting better, smaller.
And so while the whole industry was going, how do we make a bigger drone? How do we make a drone that can fly longer, that can fly farther, they can stay in the air more, that can capture a higher resolution picture, that can store more data. All of these things, Spexi, Leftin went, wait a sec. These small drones, these consumer grade drones are getting cheaper. They're very good and, and they're accessible to the general public all over the world.
So, you know, if I have this big drone that's large, you have to put it together. It's multiple pieces. It's great. Maybe it's hydrogen powered. It can fly for three and a [00:18:00] half, four hours. It can stay in the air. Awesome. But it's very difficult to move. It requires specialized team or of pilots or people to operate and fly.
And so in order to scale that beyond any localized geography, you have to move them. And, and that is costly and difficult and time consuming. And so there's no, not no, but there's very little scale in creating larger, more specialized units. And what saw is the scale is in leveraging smaller, more available units.
That's where the decentralized physical infrastructure network comes into place. Wait a second. If we can make it simple enough, if we can make it easy enough that like Hive Mapper is doing with a dash cam, right? Where you put the dash cam and you record everything, and so now you can, you can compete with with Google Maps.
Why? Because we're crowdsourcing this worldwide map. With a very small, inexpensive piece of hardware compared to the Google car or the Apple car that might cost, you know, half a million or more dollars to mount these 360 cameras on it, and then you have to pay a driver to drive this thing around all over the world all the time to get fresh data.
Well, [00:19:00] there are people driving all over the world all the time. We can, we can source fresh data from the people that are already driving these roads, right? We can source fresh data from the pilots that already have their drone. It's sitting on a shelf, they bought it 'cause they like to fly it. Why would they not like to earn money with it?
Okay, let's figure out a way to incentivize them and, and it's a win-win win kind of across the board. And I think the blockchain and DePIN networks allowed for that.
Bryce Bladon: Got it. Alright, I'm gonna take us down to our landing pattern now and, uh, try and summarize some of the stuff we talked about. As of this year last, the global drone market was about $73 billion.
Uh, for context, the video game industry is about $40 billion, which I always think is relevant. Kind of on that same, uh, wave. You were talking about drones and video games. Video games have been around a little bit longer, but there's an entire episode about me going into those numbers that is really relevant to our conversation because by 2030, that number is expected to be 163 billion.
Now where a lot of this growth is actually coming in is not in drones in and of themselves as Graham, uh, so astutely [00:20:00] highlighted, but data and specifically data services. Data services are facing a 56.4 compound annual growth rate through 2032 within the industry. Put DePIN, in a little context, the sector has received, uh, roughly a billion dollars in funding as of 2023.
It has seen a market cap of about 50 billion in 2024, and Messari reports, keep these projections in mind coming from a crypto analysis agency, but they report up to 3.5 trillion by 2028, which is quite a claim. But there are some things that are driving this claim. Enterprise adoption is growing faster than the consumer segment, and AI integration is essential for a lot of advancements in beyond visual line of sight and specifically autonomous operations.
If you want a self-driving car in these cities, these cities need to be imaged effectively. Um, which I believe is something Spexi does. Uh, the imaging, not necessarily self-driving cars, but you get it. Graham, how can people find you and follow up with you?
Graham Anderson: Yeah. I'm, uh, active in our [00:21:00] community management. So in Discord it's probably the best case.
Uh, we run a Discord server in Discord community for not only our drone pilots who fly for Spexi, but any drone pilot who wants to, or, or tech enthusiast who wants to follow along with what we're doing. You know, we don't, we don't keep it super exclusive. We want people to, to be coming in, to be hearing about what we're doing, to be making suggestions, to be part of the, the growth of a, a project and a community.
Um, so you can find our discord server. I don't know, link in the show notes maybe, or, um, you know, on our, on our website, Spexi.com, LayerDrone.org, Twitter, uh, x lots of links to, to the Discord server. So that's the best way to interact and engage with what it is that, that we're building here about, you know, where we're launching new missions, new types of missions, uh, which lead to, to new data products, uh, where we're building something that we think is really cool.
Um, we're collecting data at a, a speed and scale, uh, for the types of projects that are still being imagined by, by developers and by by other companies and users. And so we iterate and we [00:22:00] grow and we change things and we, we have a community of pilots that, that provides feedback that earns, you know, currently US dollars or Canadian dollars, wherever they're flying, moving to, you know, towards a, a blockchain based payment rail and, and our crew decentralized visual infrastructure network, uh, as we, as we look ahead.
But it's a, it's been a really cool experience so far, and I think we're, you know, as much as, as you spend time in it and you get. Steeped in it, and you feel like you've been doing it for a long time. We're we're really at the beginning of unlocking something with data, right? More data, higher resolution data, more frequently collected data.
The the products. We're starting to see clients and developers build and imagine, I think, will. For some, we'll, we'll amaze them. Uh, and for, for others, maybe they're more in the space and they know, they know or know they're coming. But even still for myself, I see these and I'm like, wow, that's a great and a really cool application.
So join the Discord. That's I guess the short answer.
Bryce Bladon: Fantastic. That's Spexi.com and LayerDrone.org, and you can find links to the Discord at the bottom of both those sites. Now Graham, most important question, I'm gonna [00:23:00] ask you this episode. Do you have time to play a couple games?
Graham Anderson: I definitely have time for a game or two.
Bryce Bladon: Alright, first up is fight or flight.
"Fight or Flight" Segment
---
Bryce Bladon: Now I have sent you three audio samples. I want you to play the one labeled six first, and I want you to take your best guess at what you're listening to.
Graham Anderson: Okay. I wonder how close they are to, to the, the object in question. I'm gonna listen to it one more time.
There's a humming in the background that sounds too loud to be a drone. I haven't got a lot of hints here. Are they all, they haven't gotten any hints.
Do I get any, a single hint?
Bryce Bladon: I loved how quickly you went into it. No. Uh, here's what I can tell you on this one. Well, actually, here's something to start with.
What qualifies as a drone, when, when does it stop being a drone?
Graham Anderson: Hmm. That's a good question. I, I, I have that conversation occasionally with people online who share like, uh, the, what they call a, uh, flying taxis. So it, it's an autonomous [00:24:00] helicopter in my mind. Mm-hmm. Right. We have helicopters, which are, you know, have rotors if either the air a pilot moves 'em around, people are working on what they're calling autonomous drones or drone taxis.
And I go, is that a drone? Once a person gets in it, is this still a drone or has it become something else? In my, in my mind, uh, a drone is both autonomous and, and un-commanded or personed, so, well
Bryce Bladon: then you might be listening to a drone with this one. Although I will say it would be more on the uh, "wow, we're still, we're making our hardware bigger and bigger" side of things.
Graham Anderson: Yeah. Commercial delivery, drone of some sort, or a large scale drone is what I hear there.
Bryce Bladon: Pretty close. You were listening to a quadcopter specifically. I think it was the DJI Phantom. I would need to double check the actual source there. Uh, it was going by the recording in a buzzing way, so I can see why you might've had a little challenge there with the Doppler effect.
Graham Anderson: Yeah, I heard some air movement, so, but smaller than I would've imagined. Um, yeah, you pick the, the sandem four. I thought it might've been large. Something larger than.
Bryce Bladon: Alright, now if you can place sample two. I'm really [00:25:00] curious if you'll be able to identify this model.
That to me sounds like an insect.
Bryce, that doesn't sound mechanical at all.
You nailed it. Nailed it in one. You've obviously flown a drone before. You know the difference between an annoying fly and an annoying drone.
Graham Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. But they're similar, but not quite the same.
Bryce Bladon: Alright, now this one's probably gonna be the hardest, but if you can actually tell me where this is from.
I owe you a drink.
Graham Anderson: All right. Let's see. I think that's you making an annoying sound like
Bryce Bladon: I am flattered. That is Jim Carrey making the world's most annoying sound.
Graham Anderson: I was about to say, like Dumb and Dumber like that was coming off my tongue, but you interrupted me. I was gonna say it sound like Lloyd and Harry and Dumb and Dumber.
Uh, so you got it.
Bryce Bladon: Pretty impressive altogether. You, uh, you knew it was a large drone, you knew it was a bug, and you knew it was something annoying. So, Graham, way to go. We're gonna call that three outta three. Uh, you can collect your prize once this recording ends. Um, don't ask what it is.
Segment: The Bryce is Wrong
---
Bryce Bladon: Do you have [00:26:00] time for the Bryce is Wrong?
Graham Anderson: The Bryce is wrong?
Bryce Bladon: Oh yeah.
So I've got three statements for you and I want you to try and figure out which one is the lie about me. And it does relate to everything we've been talking about. First statement, Bryce created the first NFT standard Second statement. Bryce's work was used by WikiLeaks to turn Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump into Katz and a source of funding.
Third statement, Bryce worked with disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams, administration to create the first municipal token for public works projects.
Graham Anderson: Hmm. I know you were involved in the launch of CryptoKitties, an early NFT project. I don't know to what degree technically, uh, which would make me.
Think that the first statement is the lie and the second two are true.
Bryce Bladon: You're really good at these games. Graham, just for context, [00:27:00] I wrote the white paper. I wrote the GitHub issue, but honestly, credit goes to Dieter, Shirley, and the two co-authors. On those issues for actually creating the standard. I just co-founded CryptoKitties with Dieter and, uh, about nine other folks.
It was the first practical example of an NFT, which is to say, uh, it was called ERC 7 21. It could actually operate like a NFT was supposed to an unf fungible token. There were examples before them, something called crypto punks, but those were ERC 20s that, uh. Basically had to be strong arm to working like an NFT Graham.
I wanna thank you so much for your time today, and also genuinely give you a tip of the cap for how you did on the games. Man, I really thought I was starting you on hard mode and you crushed it.
Graham Anderson: Oh yeah. Got it. Good. All right. We'll have to make 'em harder next time.
Thank you, Bryce.
Bryce Bladon: Excellent. Thank you so much for joining me today, Graham.
Thanks for listening to Drone On. Subscribe wherever you get your podcaststo get a new episode every week and leave us a five star review on your podcast app of choice. You can learn more about our sponsors SPEXI.com. [00:28:00] That's spexi.com and LayerDrone.org. Find out how you can contribute to the world's largest drone imagery network too.
Thanks again for listening.