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The Future of Gaming DAO or FOGDAO is a decentralized, tokenized community exploring the future of the gaming industry.
Nico Vereecke:
GM friends and welcome to the future of gaming. You are listening to our weekly forecasts. We are back. I was on a holiday in Japan for a couple of weeks, which was amazing, by the way. Thank you for asking. And now I'm backing action and so we can explore what new and exciting things are happening within the world of gaming. We have Devin, we have myself and our special guest, John Burris. As you know, we are supposed to tell you what we're going to be talking about, but we never really know where we end up. So... I'll just ask John to tell us a bit more about himself, what he's building, and then we can take it from there.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Great, great. I look forward to this winding discussion that hopefully
Nico Vereecke:
Hehehe
John Burris | MetaJuice:
will enlighten all of us. Yeah, real quick, my background. I'm really kind of a lifelong entrepreneur, right? I was early at Netscape back in the early 90s, so I'm a little bit of, I got a few gray hairs of the hairs that are left, and then was active around kind of the mobile space and actually ended up running a $5 billion P&L. for a large US telco and part of that P&L had a games business that was a part of it about a 250 million dollar business Then it was very active around streaming video and Sports and media technology could talk about that and then of course more recently last five plus years been eat breathing and slip sleeping Eating this, you know crypto web 3 space and primarily in the metaverse gaming category That's a little bit of my background. I'm the president of a company called MetaJuice. And we are a company that is kind of crypto enabling. InView, one of the largest social metaverses in the world. InView is a platform that has been around 18 plus years. It's got millions of monthly active users, 700,000 plus daily active users, real active economy. We can dig into all of that. And what we're doing is we're taking this Web2 business, this very Web2 community, it's very active, global, very large kind of creator led economy. And we're taking that into the web three space. And we could talk about how we're doing that with crypto assets, NFTs, tokens, right? And the
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
whole challenge and opportunity, I think, in moving platforms, communities like that into this cool new space.
Nico Vereecke:
Very exciting. Devin, when we were prepping for this, you told me you have some experience with InView. What can you
Devin Becker:
Yeah,
Nico Vereecke:
tell us
Devin Becker:
yeah,
Nico Vereecke:
about that?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Do
Devin Becker:
kind
John Burris | MetaJuice:
share.
Devin Becker:
of a funny story here that's related. So I think I briefly mentioned once before when we were talking about virtual worlds, but I used to be in there.com and the beta and ended up at some point in a focus group for what basically became IMVU. And
John Burris | MetaJuice:
very
Devin Becker:
I basically
John Burris | MetaJuice:
quick.
Devin Becker:
told them that I thought it was greedy and they shouldn't do it
John Burris | MetaJuice:
hahahaha
Devin Becker:
because they just wanted to sell clothes to a bunch of teenagers to display in their instant messenger. But you know, they went ahead with it and it sounds like it's working out for them. Probably don't listen to me, but thanks
Nico Vereecke:
Exactly.
Devin Becker:
for paying me to be there.
Nico Vereecke:
Yeah, Devon would make a terrible VC. There you go.
Devin Becker:
Absolutely,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
No, that was
Devin Becker:
but
John Burris | MetaJuice:
great.
Nico Vereecke:
Confirmed.
Devin Becker:
I'm happy
John Burris | MetaJuice:
That
Devin Becker:
to
John Burris | MetaJuice:
was
Devin Becker:
join
John Burris | MetaJuice:
great.
Devin Becker:
any focus group
John Burris | MetaJuice:
It's actually got a great founding story with Eric Reese, the author of Lean Startup and kind of the whole play. And so kind of a real early path. So Devin, it's hard to tell 18
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
plus years ago where
Devin Becker:
I
John Burris | MetaJuice:
to
Devin Becker:
enjoyed
John Burris | MetaJuice:
take this
Devin Becker:
there.com
John Burris | MetaJuice:
thing.
Devin Becker:
quite a bit though, and Second Life and all that stuff in that era.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yep, yep, those
Devin Becker:
So
John Burris | MetaJuice:
are
Devin Becker:
it's
John Burris | MetaJuice:
the early
Devin Becker:
good to
John Burris | MetaJuice:
pioneers.
Devin Becker:
see some of that still kind of like carrying forward as we kind of come full circle with a lot of these virtual worlds and stuff.
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm. I, so I talked to a lot of founders and this is something that I should say more often. Um, but I think that, um, the Lean Startup is, is one of the 10 most important books written about startups in the world. Um, and it, it almost seems self-evident if you're in the space for long enough, but I do think if you haven't read it, you should probably read it. Um, it's really good. And also tells the story of IMVue, which is, uh, it's also fun. So I have one question. So. This might be because I'm based in Europe, but I don't hear about IMVU at all. Um, John, what can you tell us about that? What, why is that?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
That's real fair and there's a lot of common feedback. You know, it's an, again, it's a platform. It's a open metaverse and, you know, with, again, millions of users, hundreds of thousands of rooms and experiences, nightclubs, 13 languages supported. But I think for many of those 18 years, it's been kind of off the radar for sure, right? And just kind of grew organically. The company, the firm didn't raise money for 10 plus years, just kind of kept growing, funding itself, kind of, you know. building out the experience on the platform. And then I think a lot of the users are very anonymous on the platform. So I'd say 60 plus percent are more anonymous than they are sharing in there with their actual name or their actual persona sharing that publicly. A lot of our users will create Instagram accounts, TikTok accounts and the like with the name of their avatar because that avatar name that their username on the platform really becomes an extension of who they are. but they're more anonymous. So it's one of those, and for some users, for some of the community members, it's one of those brands that you use, you'll plug in, use it for hours on a weekend night. It's your social engagement, but you may not talk about it, you guys know what I'm saying, back at the office or around your other friends, depending on how you engage with the community. And we can talk about why that might be, but it's very interesting.
Nico Vereecke:
Can you tell us about the demographics? Because maybe that also has something to do with me, you know, just not fitting in there.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
It's a great question. It's super interesting, I think, because just about 70% of our users are female, or at least identify as female. And the demographics range from the core from about 18 to 24 plus up to about 35 plus. We don't market to below 18, but we do probably have 20% of our users are under 18. And usage on the platform. on average, average engagement is about one hour of time, obviously less on mobile, more on desktop. And then we see spikes of usage, just to give you a feel of who other demographics, lots of spikes of usage in the evenings for various time zones around the world, and lots of spikes of time engagement on the platform over the weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sunday evenings, right? So it really is a social experience for a majority of our users. We also see spend spike when people are getting paid or there's, you know, or money's more freely available with folks. So it's a common platform for folks to engage with, but they'll spend more when they have more. It's kind of that demographic as well. And then I throw out one thing as we kind of like to think we're very much post pandemic, but obviously you could probably imagine you should spiked a lot. There was a lot of user growth during those two plus years. And frankly, a lot of users that came back to the platform to engage, relight up their avatar and kind of. engage back into the platform. And that's about one more thing. It's a very, there's a, at its core, there's a very, very loyal user base. So there's a user base that has been here for years, right? They may be the creators, they might be the hosts that run the experiences on the platform. But there's a core to this base that just, whether it's any, any age, almost, or any environment or financial, you know, impacts of the world. So there's this good core that really kind of has always kept. in view moving forward.
Nico Vereecke:
Hmm. Fascinating. So the stimulus checks during COVID, you
John Burris | MetaJuice:
They were,
Nico Vereecke:
saw the results?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
we do,
Nico Vereecke:
It's
John Burris | MetaJuice:
we
Nico Vereecke:
great.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
do, we do
Nico Vereecke:
All
John Burris | MetaJuice:
see
Nico Vereecke:
into
John Burris | MetaJuice:
that.
Nico Vereecke:
your pockets. There you
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah,
Nico Vereecke:
go.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
well, yeah, and the pockets of our creators we'd like to believe, right? You know,
Devin Becker:
You guys
John Burris | MetaJuice:
and
Nico Vereecke:
Okay.
Devin Becker:
should have
John Burris | MetaJuice:
push
Devin Becker:
definitely replaced
John Burris | MetaJuice:
into
Devin Becker:
Zoom
John Burris | MetaJuice:
the community.
Devin Becker:
for sure.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah,
Nico Vereecke:
Alright.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I think that's something interesting too. Every digital item on the platform, all the rooms and experiences, all the engagement, it's run by the community itself, right? We just create the platform, the marketplace, some of the rules of the road, try to keep everybody safe and, you know, try to make sure that commerce that happens on the platform. Everybody's, you know, no one's taking advantage of anybody. So it's, we kind of create that environment and then it's those creators and those hosts and earners that really drive the experience.
Nico Vereecke:
Talk to us about the commerce that you mentioned. I'm assuming goods, cosmetics, services, like experiences. What can you tell us about those?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
You're right on. And just like Devin's kind of experience years ago, the core business is a virtual goods kind of experience. So a majority of the revenue that changes hands on the platform, you know, value that changes hands on the platform is around, I'll call them items out of the marketplace. And those can be obviously outfits and clothes that can be looks of your avatar, you know, different looks and feel everything down to eyelashes, fingernails, rings, you know, you think you wouldn't even be able to see those hardly in an avatar environment. But. Those things are important. Also animations. So there's creators will create ways that an avatar might move or hug or hold hands. And so there's a massive marketplace over practice point, 60 million unique items, five and 5,000 plus every day are uploaded and reviewed and put into the marketplace. So that virtual goods environment, that is the core economy. And then what's new and we could, you know, it's really enabled by some of the crypto assets that we've introduced into the platform. is we're trying to really put the tools in place, the capabilities for a larger service economy. And I use that general goods and services idea. Our users, our community hasn't talked that way. But that's the peer-to-peer payments, right? Paying for access to a room, paying for me to show you around for four hours and take you to cool rooms or meet all my cool friends or you pay me to help you dress your avatar, which can get tricky with 60 million items, right? Or on and on and on, right? paying for advice on the platform, someone building out one of your rooms or experiences. And so you could, you know, there's kind of, that's endless. And for years, our users would go, hey, pay me in PayPal and I'll let you in my room, right? Or pay me via WePay and I'll let you in my room. And now they can, of course, on the platform, kind of do a right click and pay you with some Vcoin, right? So we're trying
Devin Becker:
How-
John Burris | MetaJuice:
to just kind
Devin Becker:
how-
John Burris | MetaJuice:
of enable that in the community and let
Devin Becker:
Are
John Burris | MetaJuice:
those
Devin Becker:
you guys
John Burris | MetaJuice:
users.
Devin Becker:
running a lot of branded stuff? I'm kind of curious about it, because I remember like there had like the Levi Deal and things like that. Like, are you guys able to bring in a lot of branded like clothing and things like that and actually push that? Or is it more like custom made stuff?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I think there's no question that a majority of the content is custom-made stuff. Some of it may look a little bit like some of the stuff that's popular in the market. So I always say like when the Met Gala happens in New York, 24, 48 hours, a lot of that stuff, some cool dress that Rihanna just wore, it's likely to show up in the platform. Some creative creator gets in there. And then we are engaging more and more with brands. And so it's not a, to me it's more of an additive play. And of course in this. I'll call it in the web three space. We see a lot of, a lot of cool things we can do all of a sudden. Now that we've introduced NFTs deeply integrated into our platform to protect those brands who want to know that they're, you know, where their stuff's going or that they could get paid on resale and all kinds of things. So we can talk about that. There's a lot of, we can even talk more recently, some of the cool brands we've done stuff with, but I think you'll see more and more of that out of us here going forward than you may have seen the last five years.
Nico Vereecke:
There's a ton I want to dive into. Could you maybe give us an idea about, you mentioned goods and services. Um, could you tell us a bit, maybe like the, the percentages, what these represents today?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, I think virtual goods are probably about 80% of all the revenue, of all the cash, of all the value that's changing hands on the platform. Services are probably 10%, right? There's a little bit of indirect kind of advertising, we call it, kind of other revenue, if you will, on the platform, but for the most part, the way I think about it internally is, or with our community. is we've done a really good job. There's always more to do, but we've kind of killed it, if you will, with the virtual goods, right? For 18 plus years and uploading and just amazing things. And it's really like, hey, let's figure out this service economy. And then I would say what's new, what's kind of creates a huge new opportunity with the Web3 space is all of a sudden, a lot through work, a lot of virtual goods, some of these services, they can, they have the opportunity to go beyond our platform, right? So NFTs, it can be taken off platform, own, traded, resold. Hey, could we interact with our friends over at Sandbox and do things? We've sold NFTs that were sold at a Decentraland event that now you can import into InView and your avatar can wear those boots that you purchased. So we're working through, and I can talk a little bit how we're really active around kind of the open metaverse and open metaverse Alliance, but kind of what does this all mean? So my job really is to kind of, and MetaJuice's job with InView is to really kind of make sure we have a next gen economy, a next gen kind of set of capabilities. abilities all driven by web three technologies that can take this thing to that proverbial next level.
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm.
Devin Becker:
Are you guys doing anything with Ready Player Me then in that sense?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, we do like that stuff. We do like those avatars and that kind of play. We know the leadership there. And so we are thinking through and we're thinking through what kind of our platform, because you could imagine, you know, 15 plus years ago, a lot of our tech stack was homegrown. So working through how do we kind of open this up through various partnerships or new tech kind of play so that we could make it easier for things to come in and out, right, of our platform. So we always say to the folks in our space that are... You know, our doors open, right? We're, we're not one of those gaming or metaverse companies that just talks about interoperability. We want to make it happen with the right players, you know, because it does take tech work right now. It's not easy, right? There's not a set of standards that one can just plug into and transfer assets around various metaverses, but hopefully that's the long-term vision.
Nico Vereecke:
I'd love to dig into the Web3 part of what you're doing. But before that, I'd just love to understand, you know, just I'm amazed by the longevity of InView. What do you think makes it stand out as a platform? Because I'm sure that a lot of competitors have risen and have fallen along the wayside. But you're still here. Yeah, what makes this unique?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, you know, I think as I mentioned, it's really serving that loyal core of your, of the community and making sure that while we've made changes or introduced mobile applications or, you know, kind of, uh, tried to kind of continue to grow the platform, um, that we were doing our best to try to always serve that core user base and understanding kind of who they are, what they want, um, trying to always create a, a fair relationship with the creators and earners on the platform, right. Um, And so I think it's that focus, you know, most focusing on that, you know, on your true fans, if you will, right? That has allowed this thing to just, to hang in there, right? To kind of hang through the storm and then take advantage of when, you know, when either we get the product right or we get the experience right or our creators do some special things, right? To just take advantage of that when it happens. You know,
Nico Vereecke:
Hmm Awesome
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I mean, it's, in the game space, as you know, it's common, things are hits and then they kind of die away and it doesn't matter what you do, it won't grow anymore. I think in this platform, I think too, we did the, you know, I've been here five and a half years, so I give credit to others for this certainly, but the early teams really did build a creator or community led economy, which keeps this platform fresh, right? Which keeps the content fresh, which, you know, as avatar looks that people want change over time or what people would wear or the kind of rooms or experiences they want to engage with. So that's something too. This thing is almost every day in microwaves. in small ways, the platform is always being refreshed, right? Versus a mobile app that maybe, you know, you just add new levels to, and it's really the same game for 10 years, you know?
Nico Vereecke:
Um, one question I have before we dive into the web three stuff, and this is kind of related when we talk about UGC and the creation of assets, which is something that we see more and more projects looking at, um, one concern I always have is, is just like asset inflation in a way, and what is too similar to something else to be a new product and you know, how do, how do you make sure that there's not going to be a hundred different, very similar copies of for Hannah's dress? or certain products that look like, I don't know what some of the brands are you work with, let's say a Nike shoe or something, right?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Right.
Nico Vereecke:
How do you make sure that someone that makes something that has a, an inverse swoosh is, is either allowed or not allowed depending on how you're looking at it
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah,
Nico Vereecke:
at scale.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
yeah, no, it's when you truly, and this is like any social open platform, right? When you truly allow creators or the community to really help build the experience, that's a risk. And so there's no question with 60 plus million items in the marketplace, a lot of those, I was teasing about the white t-shirt, right? I'm not saying there's thousands of white t-shirts, but there's lots of products that are more or less alike. So it's really important that the marketplace, has, and we're always upgrading it, but has advanced features to make that search and discovery possible, right? Or it's really important that we are able to elevate and make it clear who the creator was, because creators have their own brands in this environment. And then I think, not to drag us too quickly into the Web3 space, but the introduction of NFTs on our platform and true rarity or exclusivity or collections and the way that we're trying to communicate that in the... community and make those elevated in a sense and an extra set of review. That's all important to try to help kind of call out or make it clear, you know, what is and what isn't part of the platform. And then I would say from a brand perspective, you know, anytime we obviously work with brands and we want to, we're a, we're a very highly compliant. I could talk about it kind of, you know, entity platform. And so anytime a brand wants us to clean something up, we can work through the platform and look for various ways that creators might be using the product brand or logo or spelling things differently and do our best, right?
Nico Vereecke:
Good. Awesome. So tell us about your shifts or like, you know, when you got to learn about blockchain technology and when you started realizing, yo, this might be interesting for what we're doing.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, yeah. It was really in 2017 as I was contemplating and it was, you know, the current CEO was, at the time was, you know, encouraging me to join the team. And what we both saw was that the existing behaviors, the existing, you know, usage patterns of the in view community was really an ideal fit for the Web3 space. And I'll say for crypto assets. I mean, that's what made it so such an obvious, hey, somebody should do this. I mean, and it should probably be us, because our users all had for years, for, I don't know, 15 years, our 10 plus years had been using cash fiat to purchase a virtual currency called InView Credits. They were very comfortable doing that, right? Buying this virtual currency, like a lot of gaming platforms. Our users were very comfortable buying virtual goods, virtual items, right? They were very comfortable spending with each other across the platform, right? And so as we looked at it, and the millions, like I'll just say, you know, on average this year, our users purchase about 20 million digital items every month out of the marketplace. Um, you know, um, as those, hopefully over time, all become NFTs, you know, even 10% of that is larger than the NFT transactions per month on OpenSea, just 10%. Right? So you start to look at this and like, this is not a platform and I've seen these in web three or, you know, where we have to start from scratch or we have to, you know, where we're a messaging app and we have to create an economy or know that we're one never existed, you know, It's really like, gosh, if we could just do this the right way, and I'll say this, I'll use this word, in a seamless way. So for our users, it just feels like they're using crypto and they hardly know it, you know, how they just get all the benefits. If we can do this the right way, we should have loads of usage and honestly be, at least in this early stages in my mind, one of the largest crypto economies, certainly metaverse economies in the world, you know. So that, and that's really, we can talk about this later, that's really an advantage of Web2 companies, because there's bigger ones than us. moving into this space the right way. You know, you could really be big in this space.
Nico Vereecke:
It's, you don't have to face the cold star problem. Like you already went through
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yes.
Nico Vereecke:
the cold star problem and now
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah.
Nico Vereecke:
you have the creators and you have the consumers and now it's just implementing this new tech that essentially 10X might be too much, but improves the experience from, for the end user.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Right, right. It really does. It really is. And doing it the right way, communicating carefully. I'll share some interesting things too. We've, we talk to our community all the time, right. And they're great at answering, talking, answering polls or giving us feedback. So we, you know, even a year and a half, two years ago, started talking about NFTs, right? Not a lot of love for them back, back
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
in the day. And, you know, and, uh, yeah, we shared the benefits of them. Hey, for the first time, you can actually own these items, resell these items, give them to others, right? They're like, oh, we like all that. We just don't like. Now, if we look at NFTs, I'd say there's probably about 70% acceptance. It'll be more too, as our creators get lit up on creating NFTs in a very easy way. So it's also, you know, you have to be patient too. Like we always talked about, as we made this migration, this transformation, we're not going to like blow up the business, right? We're not going to blow up the community by forcing crypto in a shock. You know, we're going to try to do it the right way and in a somewhat patient way. to make sure everybody can be on board.
Nico Vereecke:
Can you tell us about the different assets and because you have NFTs and you mentioned some coins. Can you tell us a bit more about just the crypto economy as a whole?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'll kind of share it in the order that it's kind of come to, come to the metaverse too for us, right? The first step was the introduction of a token, an asset in ERC 20 called Vcoin. And Vcoin is really like digital cash, right? You know, in our world, we call it a stable coin, right? And so for our users, the introduction of Vcoin and with it came a full introduction of, you know, an integrated custodyed wallet. right? And, you know, kind of full transaction transparency and the ability to move assets around. And so we introduced the coin and it was a way to on ramp everybody and our users are upset. That's their real traders and real earners. So their first desire in the space was to have an asset that had fixed value that they could hold, pay each other with and cash out into Fiat and then pay their rent by a new computer. Right. So so the introduction of the coin, I could talk more about how that works and operates, but it's It's really kind of a fixed price, again, using words the SEC likes, but a stable coin in our world, token for the metaverse. And it can be taken off platform. 99% of the usage is on platform, as users pay each other and do things and cash out into fiat. The next phase, phase two of the project of the transformation is really the introduction of NFTs, which happened last year. Before that, we were selling some NFTs off platform and doing some cool things, but it was all... very custom and bespoke kind of plays. But late last year in Q4, we had fully integrated NFTs into our platform. So we, with some of our creators, started to launch every week, every Tuesday, they would introduce a set, I don't know, 500 to 2,000 new NFTs, always selling out. And we popped up to the top 10 in DAP radar of collectibles. And that was just, it's less than one-tenth. of 1% of the virtual goods that are sold every month right now is what we've already done. I'll just say briefly, phase three of our NFT project is putting the ability for a creator to mint NFTs in what we call our studio tool. So when they upload a product, they can go click, click and turn that product into an NFT, right? One of them, 10 of them, a thousand of them and put that into the marketplace. So once that gets activated, then we turn on our massive community. So we see this NFT growth just going nuts here and actually in a few weeks. And then phase three is what is happening right now, which is the introduction of really, I think, kind of the final asset that kind of rounds out the new economy, which is called V-Core. So sometimes we use the word or around V-Core, a little bit like digital gold for the metaverse. It's also an ERC-20. It will be exchange listed. It's an asset that will, it's a fixed mint unlike Vcoin. So its price will be, you know, dynamic. Um, and it'll be an asset. It's not an asset that's going to be available to the U S users on our platform or the Canadian users for regulatory reasons. Um, but it is a, it'll be a new kind of next, you know, next level kind of asset for our international from the U S perspective, you know, our international community, right? Um, a new way to earn, to be paid. And our creators, our community, they'll have the decision. Do they want to hold Vcore? Do they want to step back in something like Vcoin? And we'll be able to, because we're not backing it with cash, we'll be able to be generous in rewards and really making sure the core of the community is really engaged around this new asset. And so we're really excited about Vcore, which in a lot of ways is kind of the final piece, asset, kind of crypto asset to the platform, right? From digital cash. NFTs, which really enables ownership, and then V-Core is really kind of the full picture for us at this point.
Nico Vereecke:
So would it be fair to characterize it as the following? I think one of the strengths that what Free brings to gaming is that it can give players a tiny share of the platform itself that they enjoy and spend time in, which essentially gives them a bit of a skin in the game. Is that a bit of the purpose of V-Core? Do I understand that well?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, you know, we talk a lot about it allows our users who are holding earning the core to participate in the future of the metaverse, right? Um, and we're not, you know, we're not, we haven't linked it directly into obviously, you know, ownership of the platform or, you know, directly into the monetization of other activity in the platform and again, for primarily for regulatory reasons, uh, but there is that, that idea of participating in the future of the metaverse. And I think. Whether that's, to your point, there's this ability to earn in a new way. I probably can't go into a lot more detail. And there's an ability for our users to have a voice more based on their holdings in the future of the metaverse. And yeah, and to your point or your question, beyond just straight cash and fiat, there's something more to this, right? This B-core, as you guys know, and an asset that is volatile in nature. does represent kind of the future of the metaverse for us. All right, that seems too cagey but
Nico Vereecke:
I respect it. Great. One quick question, because I'd like to dive into the regulatory stuff. From your perspective, so I look at you as a strong existing Web2 player in the space moving in, knowing that they can bring massive transactions. In terms of blockchain infrastructure to build on, because you're going to need a high TPS, high transactions per second. Just maybe briefly walk us through your thinking there.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, no, we for sure we do. And the current architecture at a high level, it is pulled together through some great technology, but also some really, I think, smart partnerships. So the first partnership was we have a deep relationship with uphold as kind of our back end foundation. If you guys are aware of uphold, uphold is like a crypto bank slash exchange, but they have a really great kind of platform service. They run the backend for the Brave browser, right? And the BAT token, I have to wear that. So, which was handling millions of users and millions and millions of transactions. So it gave us a lot of confidence that they could handle our user numbers, our transaction numbers. And so we plugged Uphold in. And so as users on our platform are looking at their, clicking on Vcoin or Vcore and seeing their wallet and the assets in there, or they're sending money to their friend on the platform, that's all kind of handled. by the uphold platform, right? So you could say off chain, side chain, because of the high transaction volumes and the need to have a low cost and fast transactions. So we're quickly moving, in a sense, ERC-20 tokens around our platform, million times a month. And that's true by them. Then on the NFT side, our kind of early partnership is with a mutable. So, with the IMX token in there, platform that layer two play. And so the early NFT minting on our platform and all that activity, and if one was to look over at a place like Dapp Radar, we're one of the leading projects on top of the immutable right now. And so then, and then of course, we're looking around, we've tried to plug all these things in, in a way that allows us to be flexible because this space is so dynamic, right? From layer ones to layer twos to what's hot, what's not. And so our current partnerships have worked great. and we're in really good shape, but we always keep our head up too to kind of understand what could be or should be next.
Nico Vereecke:
Like from my time spent in this space talking to, you know, founders building, uh, building, um, this is one takeaway that I think a lot of people probably overlook it is that, you know, we are still so early and there is really not a playbook about how to do Web3Write at scale, um, and how to do Web3Write for games, even not at scale is not really discovered. And so I would say that making sure that you're always flexible is probably key because things will change. And the next bull run, we're going to be talking about a bunch of other things. And we're going to be excited about a bunch of other things. And, um, you know, those might also not work out. And so I guess, um, yeah, make sure that you're, you, you remain as flexible as you can. And you don't, you know, sell tokens too early because we've said this before on this podcast, if you're trying to raise them, you sold tokens and your fully diluted market cap is, is $2 million right now and you're not, you don't have an easy time.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, no, I think just to elevate that point for any, you know, would be or active entrepreneurs in this space, it is early. It's super early, right? We're working through all a lot of the early, you know, mess that comes in an early space like this. And we've done it before, right? With internet and other kinds of plays, but even those kind of standardized fairly quickly. Um, this one's funky, whether it's from regulatory perspective, you know, underlying technology perspectives, whether it's kind of what is the right recipe, right from, you know, fully decentralized to somewhere on the spectrum. So it's an awesome space, but there's not an easy playbook. There's not easy patterns. I think it makes it tough for venture and others too, as well as entrepreneurs, right? Because there's not folks that like to look for patterns. There are obviously some, but it's funky and dynamic. And you gotta be up for that. You've gotta be up for that.
Nico Vereecke:
It is the Wild West. You,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
It is.
Nico Vereecke:
John, you mentioned regulation. Talk to us about your learnings around that.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, it's, I first say as a, you know, entrepreneur who's built several businesses in different categories. Um, this space is one of the most, obviously the legal regulatory, um, domain is more important than this space than any other industry I've ever worked. I mean, I've never worked in healthcare, I suppose, or I don't know what would be more, but it is, it is all just on that theme of being dynamic. It's super dynamic and especially for us, cause we have a global economy with users that transact with each other. regardless of where they live. And so that was important. I'd say too, being a solid Web2 business, we couldn't just throw caution to the wind. We've always, as I mentioned, said, look, we're gonna make this transformation, but not blow up the business. We also would say we're not gonna risk the business or the community. So we took from day one, and it's added extra time and expense, but a very compliant approach to what we've done. Right? So we've tried our best to always, I'd say we've done a great job kind of really understanding what, what the rules of the road are. Um, and trying to do everything we do in a very compliant way, um, which we could obviously dive into. Um, in fact, I'd pull out one point we actually related to V coin that, you know, kind of, um, stable asset on our platform that's like cash, we actually worked with the SEC, um, and in 2020. earned what is only the third crypto centric no action letter from the SEC and really the last no action letter from the SEC. And it really expanded what one could do with a crypto asset with a token, in this case in ERC 20, because it was the first no action letter and there's two prior, but it was the first no action letter that actually allowed, outlined the blueprint, if you will, that allowed an ERC 20 or any token to leave a platform, right? To actually leave the walled garden or leave the environment. And so as long as we follow the blueprint and anybody can follow the blueprint of that no action letter, asset like Vcoin should be deemed by the SEC to not be a security. Right, so that's like next level compliance. Right, let's not just launch something, let's actually work with the SEC and in this case earn this no action letter that's available online for anybody to look at. And... have an asset that probably is about as compliant as one could be.
Nico Vereecke:
How, just to, um, to give people an idea, um, could you, could you give us a sense of how difficult it was to get that no action letter?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Um, it was about a, it was a year of time. Um, it was working with a great, with great team over at Perkins Cooey. Um, it wasn't painful, you know, like, you know, um, they were, it was a great team of folks that we've worked with at the sec it just took time. It just took time because, you know, and I'll, I'm not going to speak for sec, but it, it appears like that a no action letter when they, when they publish that it's a big deal, right? It sets a new, not just for us, but it sets a. a new kind of, you know, boundary, a new set of rules and outlines kind of what is allowed and what is not, or at least what is allowed, I'll say in this case. And so it's a big deal for them as they work through all their, you know, steps to make something like that. So it was really a commitment, you know, honestly, Vcoin could have been an exchange listed token, you know, three, three years ago, but we were working through the process. We were actually going to announce it at San Francisco blockchain week. And our interaction with our legal firm, the SEC, and them said, Hey, you guys have to have something here that could earn no action letter. And that made us pause and go, Hey, I guess, you know, and our board, which is more of a web two board was like, Hey, let's, let's take this path and
Nico Vereecke:
Mm-hmm.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
go the highly compliant way. So
Nico Vereecke:
Yeah,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
that's
Devin Becker:
How are you
John Burris | MetaJuice:
what
Devin Becker:
guys
Nico Vereecke:
let's.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
we
Devin Becker:
making
John Burris | MetaJuice:
did.
Devin Becker:
that basically a stable coin? Like, is it back for the dollar? Like, what's the functionality that makes that no action work? And you said it kind
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah.
Devin Becker:
of a blueprint for others, right? What is that blueprint?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, you know, at a high level, well, I'll just check off a few of the pieces of that no action letter. One is that we are obligated to sell it at a fixed price at a price. I'll say at a dollar. It's not technically a dollar, but sell it at a dollar and buy it back for a dollar. We're able to take, and as our users, transaction fees, you know, either peer to peer transaction fees or a transaction fee when a user turns back, turns V coin back into fiat. can sell it for a dollar back to us. We back it, we just manage our cash well, and we backed that asset, and any user that is holding Vcoin, whether they're on our platform or off our platform, can bring that to the platform or to uphold and turn that back into fiat. The SEC, no actual owner, did not outline any kind of, kind of say the banking rules behind this. And then we had rules ourselves that even though it's an ERC-20, we couldn't and we haven't, you know, engage ourselves with exchanges or, you know, decentralized exchanges or any of those kinds of plays. Right. And so because of that, you know, one can create models where the price could go up or down, but rationally in a rational market, it really should stay pretty stable. And I'd say it has, it has stayed stable for two plus years and really kind of serve its purpose.
Devin Becker:
I guess if the US market does go after stable coins in general, right? Then is there like some risk there that they lump you guys in, uh, whether it be considered one that's like backed by a bank of money or just in general, like is, has that functionality essentially.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, you know, I think it's possible because I know, you know, everybody, you know, governments around the world have the right to change their mind about things or approaches or other rules. Uh, of course, and we follow all the, you know, money transmission rules, money service business rules. Um, so I, you know, get into that as well. Um, so it's possible things change. We're just a much smaller economy, even though I think we're big for the web three metaverse, we're a much smaller stable coin environment than, than any of the big dogs that the USDT's of the world, USDC's of the world. Right? So that's definitely where they're focused first, but we will, you know, if something changes related to our model or our approach, we'll definitely do our best to comply, you know, or I'll say we will comply.
Nico Vereecke:
Do you think you'd be able to get that no action letter today?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Um, uh, I would just, you know, w if I look at the number of no action letters since ours, I would say no,
Nico Vereecke:
Yeah. OK.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I would say no. And it seems like, you know, there's lots of, from what I gather, right? This is just us having a conversation with what it appears like if, if one plugs into this wider, you know, web three community folks have been talking to the SEC and others a lot with regulators, but I, you just don't see, I haven't seen an act, a new action letter since late 2020. So I think one would say probably not.
Devin Becker:
Why even create your own coin instead of just using an existing stable coin? Like what's the benefit to you guys? What's, what's the reason behind it? Was it just like, Hey, we already had a coin. We just want to move it on chain. Like what's the reasoning.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, no, it's a great question. And all of our, yeah, it's a great question. Used to get it all a lot. Um, for our users, the easiest step and for us too, was just having a token that was on our platform that we didn't have to, you know, um, go by ourselves or they didn't have to go by themselves. And so we had much more control over the economy and seamlessly how it was integrated into the platform. We're not at risk of something, you know, USDT being banned by the UN and then all of a sudden we can't. So it was that kind of play. We obviously looked at it and said, hey, look, our model here, we're not trying to be the stable coin for the world. In fact, we would like it. The coin can easily be transferred into other assets too. So if there was, I'll say if there was ever a standardized stable coin of the metaverse, we'd be open to adopting that. Does that kind of make sense? If it was easy for users to move around, they'd probably ask for it. I think long term, as this stuff evolves. gamers, people in the metaverse, just people in these virtual environments are probably going to want to have stuff that either easily interoperates, you know, tokens can move super easily between each other without massive transaction fees, or there are more, you know, just a handful of assets that one would have to use, right, versus one for every game, right, at least in the stablecoin category.
Nico Vereecke:
to, we're coming up on time, I wanted to have John, maybe a couple of your biggest learnings in bringing Web3 to an existing platform.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Yeah, no, I think it's a couple of things, right? It's first, just given how early we are in the space and the understanding of even our communities, our users around web three assets and the benefits of it. It's going to be, it's, it's harder work than just, you know, walking into, you know, when we're all, when our web three communities together or you're at a conference, it feels like we all speak the same language and we're all on the same page. That's not true for the mass market. Right. So it's going to take patience. It'll take patients with a web two team and company that's making a migration to web three because some of these models are funky or scary or you're changing business models or you're risking parts of the business model. Right. All of a sudden our users can resell items. Are they still going to buy new items? Right. Where we were, you know, you know, where the revenue shares a little better. And so that can be tough, too. Right. And then we mentioned the regulatory environment. It's, you know, prior to the introduction of web three on our platform. you know, the legal regulatory risk of the company was pretty low. We do a lot to keep users safe on the platform and do all those smart things globally. Um, so we've done a real good, well, all of a sudden your profile is a little different, right? When you step into web three, um, and there's a lot of scary, you know, noise in the space too. So I think in some ways I'll say there's a massive, as we mentioned earlier, there's a massive opportunity when you take a existing solid web two business and move it into web three, cause my gosh, you're probably going to show up. millions of users, millions of transactions, you're gonna wow the space with just engagement. But the counter is you also have to kind of change all those things that I mentioned. You have to have the patience to work through that with the users and the community, the company and team members, as well as those around you. So it's a give and take, if you will, or there's pluses and tough things to work through. But it's all worth it.
Nico Vereecke:
From what I take away from what you just said is that it seems like this is... You can't half-ass this. Right? This is like everyone needs to be on board at the top level. Everyone needs to believe in this. And it feels like, you know, that is... It feels like you guys are more unique. Like quite unique in this. And to me, at least from what I see, I don't think this... Sentiment happens at a lot of, you know, like executive levels of a lot of these companies. And so. Yeah, given that it's still so hard and so uncertain. It feels like it's we've seen a lot of half-assed attempts and
John Burris | MetaJuice:
100%.
Nico Vereecke:
Probably going to see some more half-assed attempts before.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
It's a great way to put it. If you're half, I mean, you can work your way in a little bit, but if the things you launch or the things you do are half ass, you don't have to launch your entire strategy in one swoop, but if you half out, you're not gonna get there. You
Nico Vereecke:
Hehe.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
won't get there. And you guys know this community too, you know, and our community, even the InView community, not just Web3 communities, but if it smells wrong, if it looks wrong, if it looks like it's a money grab, if it looks like you're just doing it to do it, then you know, you know, doing your best to eat, breathe and sleep to space, you know, um, they're going to know. And so you've got to do it the right way.
Nico Vereecke:
That's a great way to end this. John, where can people learn more about you and where can people find out more about what you're doing with MVue and the Web3 strategy?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Oh my gosh, anymore we're on every platform, right? No, metajuice.com is not a bad place to start. And then obviously you can find MetaJuice or InView on LinkedIn and Twitter. A very easy to search for those. So we've made it a nice web of education, if you will. So actually folks can just look for IMVU as well and find their way to us.
Devin Becker:
Can we
John Burris | MetaJuice:
And
Devin Becker:
chat
John Burris | MetaJuice:
so.
Devin Becker:
with you on the platform though? That's what we want
Nico Vereecke:
Hmm
Devin Becker:
to know.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Oh, on
Devin Becker:
So
John Burris | MetaJuice:
the
Devin Becker:
we
John Burris | MetaJuice:
platform.
Devin Becker:
could show off our latest clothes we bought and.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I am Mountain Boy is my username on the platform.
Devin Becker:
Excellent.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
So I expose that to everybody here, but yeah. Yeah.
Nico Vereecke:
Mountain boy. All right. Devin, what's your gamertag?
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Mountain Boy.
Nico Vereecke:
I never
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Love
Nico Vereecke:
asked
John Burris | MetaJuice:
the mountains.
Nico Vereecke:
you this, but I want to know.
Devin Becker:
Yeah, I just, I just go off at MZO all the time when I
Nico Vereecke:
I'm
Devin Becker:
can.
Nico Vereecke:
Zoe,
Devin Becker:
Uh,
Nico Vereecke:
of course.
Devin Becker:
so
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Uh
Devin Becker:
yeah,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
huh.
Devin Becker:
I had, I had it for like what? 25 plus years at this
Nico Vereecke:
Hmm
Devin Becker:
point. Like I got it. Got to
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Goodness.
Devin Becker:
lay my claim, man.
Nico Vereecke:
Yeah,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
I don't
Nico Vereecke:
I
John Burris | MetaJuice:
have
Nico Vereecke:
agree
John Burris | MetaJuice:
that persona with Mountain Boy just to be fair to everybody in case. Yeah.
Devin Becker:
It's a little more general.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
It's only
Nico Vereecke:
That's true,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
on
Nico Vereecke:
yeah
John Burris | MetaJuice:
in-view. Yeah.
Nico Vereecke:
good. All right,
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Very
Nico Vereecke:
John
John Burris | MetaJuice:
cool. Well, we'll see you guys in the metaverse, sounds like, you know?
Nico Vereecke:
100%. Thank you for joining, man. It was an absolute pleasure.
John Burris | MetaJuice:
Really appreciate it. Thank you guys.
Nico Vereecke:
Good. Devin, thank you as well. But you, listener, thank you most of all for listening. If you enjoyed, let us know. Join our Discord if you haven't already to have, you know, conversations like this. And with that, we are out and we look forward to speaking to you in the next episode. Ciao.