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In-depth discussions and explorations into the whole new world of web3 and the metaverse with leading thinkers and industry experts. Presented by the NYU Metaverse Collaborative.
The Whole Metaverse Podcast - Episode 6
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Pierre Gervois: Welcome to the Whole Metaverse, NYU podcast.
Dr. Elizabeth Haas and myself Pierre Gervois are. Your co-host today, we'll have the, we have the pleasure to have Dominic Carbonaro, the business Development lead for NFT and Art at the Blockchain Avalanche. And what's very interesting with Avalanche is that this blockchain really wants to focus on accessibility as Dominique Carbonaro.
Said so that the gas fees and the very high cost of gas fees and chains like Ethereum were too high and were preventing a mass adoption of blockchain as well as the, as the speed and time necessary for transaction. And, and that's one of the main reason it it choose to, to work with with Avalanche.
So Liz, what are the, the, the main first case use case of Avalanche?
Elizabeth Haas: what I thought was pretty fascinating is how he's prioritizing where blockchain will make a different short. You know, and, and there he has ticketing and a class of NFTs around fine art, not collectibles, and the need for gaming and making them really something special. And I think it'll be fascinating to watch whether that prediction holds or not and how Latin America comes on board here, which is one of their focuses.
Just very fascinating.
Pierre Gervois: Okay, so let's watch Dominic Carbonaro interview.
Pierre Gervois: so Carbon arrow. Welcome to the Home Metaverse NYU podcast. You're the business development lead NFT and Arts at the blockchain avalanche. Dr. Elizabeth Haas and myself, Pierre Gervois the co-host, Let's start with a, a, a personal, a, a approach. At what point in your career have you heard about the blockchain, and did you, did you have this idea that it was going to change the way we're doing business?
Dominic Carbonaro: that's a great question cuz I think everyone has joined this at a different stage in their life. I discovered blockchain technology in 2020, a little bit like maybe a month or two before all the covid stuff happened. So maybe like January or February of 2020. I was working in technology sales, so I did, EdTech sales.
I worked for a publisher called Pearson, which I'm sure you all know. Went on to work for another publisher called Cengage, and then went to a startup to do affordable solutions. And I was doing that. Had a full team. I was managing across a few states. And then around, yeah, January, February of 2020, my friend kept telling me about this crypto stuff.
He's like, you gotta buy it. He's like, you gotta buy it, you gotta buy it. And so I was like, all right, I bought some cuz I trust him. He's a smart. And then about six weeks later, the market just completely crashed. And I was like, well, now I gotta learn about this stuff. Right? So I spent, you know, a part of my job was always being on college campuses, meeting with professors, meeting with students.
And you know, during, during covid you couldn't really do any of that. I'm sure you're all well aware, right? So I had a lot of free time and so I spent a lot of time really diving into it. and then I really started to discover a lot of just core. Like, just even at my own personal career, like fundamental business drivers, we had that blockchain would've really helped provide value back to both the students and, and the professors.
So it was kind of very clear to me when I first saw it. And then from there it's pretty much been all I've cared about.
Elizabeth Haas: So you're talking about, you know, the business drivers and how important it is and what it can do. , in your vision, if everything came together and it delivered value the way you would imagine. What are those things? What, what will it deliver two years from now in the ideal world?
Dominic Carbonaro: I think there's a lot of amazing use cases outside of education that, that specifically NFTs can help with. A few I'm really excited about. One being ticketing for events and concerts and things of that nature. you know, artists and creatives, monetize their, their, their fan bases or their consumers, right?
And so there's a lot of middlemen in that process that extract a ton of value. From both the end consumer as well as the creator. Like, you know, live Nation takes a huge percent of ticket sales from artists. They take 20% of merchandise sales at the door. Me, as a secondary buyer, I then have to spend a 20, 30% fee sometimes to sell tickets on secondary markets or like what you saw with the Taylor Swift incident, where they drastically oversold the front end of the ticket process.
And then Tickets were $700-800 So, you know, using NFTs as a ticketing tool to allow con, to allow creators to sell products directly to consumers. , those fees and percentages would be drastically cut down on, you know, blockchain is very, very good at transferring ownership of those assets and proving that those tickets are authentic and real.
So no more meeting up with someone and paying them cash and then giving you a ticket that might be fake. So I think there's a lot of really great, use cases that, that me, me as an end consumer I could see benefit from and as well as the creator. I can see benefits from tho. I would say that's probably my most like short term thing I, I see happening in the next few years.
I think long. You know, adding things like deeds to your, to, to real estate on a blockchain in, in imal way verification of like diamonds that are on a blockchain, that, that make it very easy to authenticate using NFTs, those types of use cases. I'm, very confident will happen, but I just think the adoption cycle for getting that done is, is a lot longer than some of the more short term stuff.
Elizabeth Haas: You. You also talk about education. Where do you imagine it being used in education?
Dominic Carbonaro: my father's a dean of a college, so I come from a family of educators. Education's always super been important to me. was a ca counselor, my brother's a professor, my brother-in-law's a professor. So you know, I've seen a lot of facets of higher education and I think the one that excites me the most is the idea of scholarships.
you know, right now I, I know personally there's a lot of people who maybe apply for scholarships that, never intended to do the thing that they actually applied. Like people apply sometimes to get scholarships cuz they wanna become a professor and have no intention of doing that.
Or they apply for scholarships and it's contingent upon some type of, GPA or grades that they receive, for their, renewals. And it takes a long time to pass the transferships of those grades, even just applications. Of scholarships can be kind of cumbersome, right? Having to continuously supply your, results or scores.
So I think if you can find a way to streamline the scholarship process and make the payments of those very, very fluid, cuz like I can prove I've hit X, Y, or Z requirement and then payments released without having to go through a lot of manual steps because you can do those via smart contracts. I think there's a lot of opportunity in that space.
Pierre Gervois: There are multiple blockchains out there. How do you differentiate avalanche for prospective users who heard about polygon? Solana? How do you convince them to go with Avalanche?
Dominic Carbonaro: Yeah, so I think there's really two approaches. There's like a builder and a technical side, so people who are making the apps, and then there's like the consumer facing side, right? People who are just like, Fine and selling things. I think on the builder side we are technically different. Really in two, in two cases.
One, it's our approach to scaling blockchain. So all blockchains have the scalability tri, you know, the Ethereums and polygons believe in this idea of, of vertical. So you'll have the base layer and then layer twos, layer threes on top of it. Avalanche believes in a concept called sub. . So essentially they're more, they're, they're, they're, they're permissioned or permissionless blockchains that are part of the avalanche ecosystem.
So it's kind of like a chain of chains. And we believe that that gives builders the most flexibility. So you can create a blockchain, decide who validates it decide who can enter it, who can't enter it. If you want a very permissioned. You know, controlled environment, or if you want a permissionless environment, you can open it up, right?
So we believe in that approach for scaling also avalanche's, consensus mechanism is different. So what I mean by that is on Ethereum, if you, if you submit a transaction, it can take up to 12 plus minutes for that transaction to be confirmed. So meaning, like I I submitted transaction within eight to nine minutes, there's a potential ability for someone to reorganize those blocks and your transaction wouldn't have.
Our time to finalities under two seconds. So when a block is committed, it's committed, it's confirmed, there's no go backs. And so those are really important for things like financial institutions or things that need fast settlement. So those are really two big technical differentiators. And then, you know, subnets use our consensus mechanism below.
Most blockchains either use classical or nakamoto consensus. We are one, we kind of made a, a, a leap in that, in that sense. From the consumer. avalanche because of its, nature. Gas fees are very cheap and affordable. So, you know, this is even a personal story for me. I started in, crypto and blockchain in 2020 and I started with Ethereum cause it was all I ever knew.
And I was making, you know, good money at the time. I wasn't exorbitantly rich, but I was in a career for five years. I had a college degree. I was doing well and I could barely afford it. And I had friends I wanted to tell about it and, teach this stuff to. but I knew they just had no ability to participate.
It was just way too expensive. they, you just too expensive, you couldn't even participate. So Avalanche has extremely cheap fees and it's very, very fast. And so part of that was I instantly saw that and I was like, I have this huge breadth of people I want to get into this and I can't even introduce them.
because the, system's so prohibited and, limiting, right? And these are people in the United States who have careers and jobs and degrees. It was too expensive. So I started extrapolating this out to the rest of the world and I said, if this is going to really address. The entire world It needs to be something that's accessible to everyone.
And so, avalanche was, very, very cheap fees. It was very, very fast. And I could introduce people so they could practice and try and play with these new primitives. And so from the consumer facing side, I'd say that's, a huge advantage. and also, you know, some of the applications we have built on our blockchain are, are, are amazing.
Everything from, from defi to games to to NFTs, there's a lot of really fun things you.
Pierre Gervois: Geographically speaking, even if blockchain, don't want to admit it, some blockchain or more focused on some geographical area. So Ethereum is primarily focused in the United States. Tezos is focused in Europe, Africa, middle East Zone. So how would you define. The geographical scope of avalanche right now.
Dominic Carbonaro: that's a very good question. I would say right now it's a little bit a mix of, United States. There's a lot of Turkish, so I'd say it's us, Turkish, and some European. When we, you know, when we became popular and when Avalanche really had its explosive growth period back in 2021. 2021, you know, we were really well positioned because people wanted an alternative that was affordable that they could use.
And so we captured a lot of very early on market. So I'd say right now it's, it's, yeah, between Turkey, US, and Europe a big focus for us, at least in my vertical, in the NFT space, is going to be latam. We think there's a ton of amazing talent down there. You know, there's a, cryptocurrencies go a really long way, especially in certain areas where their currencies are really, really volatile and, and experience immense, immense inflation.
And so we really want to tap into that one culturally rich area to create amazing art. And two, be able to provide a monetary option outside of their current one that might be more stable in the form of like stable coins or even our native token. So that's at least my approach going into next year and where we really wanna see a lot of growth.
Elizabeth Haas: Before we jump into NFTs, I have one question and just make sure I'm interpreting what you said properly. Part of what differentiates you is you almost have a menu that lets people scale and how they wanna put their blockchain together. It's a menu, not a build driven approach, and that lets it be faster.
Dominic Carbonaro: yeah, I would say the scalability options. like what a subnet gives is it allows you to have more optionality as a builder. So do you
Elizabeth Haas: right? Right. So you pick the options in the menu. Right.
And, and are there other blockchains that are designed that way, or you, or are you unique?
Dominic Carbonaro: yeah. So, so there are other blockchains that are designed that way. It's called an app chain approach. Cosmos has this, has a similar scaling architecture. Polka dot has a similar scaling architecture. The difference between polka dot and cosmos is they're bound to the, to the power issue where Cosmos can only have a hundred validators because of the way their consensus mechanism works.
Each one has to talk to one of talk, talk to one another. So as you add a validator, you're adding exponential, more work, which slows down the process. Ava doesn't suffer from that because of our consensus mechanism. You can. Millions of validators. I mean, we have 1400. So the way it works through a gossip protocol, there's no limits.
You don't have to be capped at a hundred.
Elizabeth Haas: tell us about your focus on NFTs and why you're focused there and where you see that going.
Dominic Carbonaro: So my focus Yeah. Is on, is on NFTs. I started at Avalanche in June. I've been around the ecosystems and participating in, in, in the space for a very, very long time since, you know, early 2020. and my focus when I started was to not so much like look outside and tell you what the weather was.
Cause I think anyone can do that, right? My focus here is to say, where do I think there's real value, real long-term value and work? How can I start building out those use cases? And so like when I got into the space, the one thing that was extremely clear to me was the, the need and, and want for NFTs in the art space, specifically in the traditional art space.
Things like being able to understand where titles have been transferred being able to tokenize a traditional piece of art on a blockchain and then get, get. Liquidity or lending for that asset. Right. Very, very, the, the, the art market and specifically the lending market for art is extremely large.
And then also being able to get, you know, go into extremely creative areas and allow people a different form of expression in the forms of NFTs and create a living off of that and create an artist's story. So a big focus for ours has been, you know, identifying that niche, onboarding artist and creatives, and starting to get, you know, some really great stories of people.
Maybe we're completely new to this. and now our, you know, building careers out of becoming artists on the blockchain.
Elizabeth Haas: the other thing that you talked about was the focus on Latin America, and I was just wondering how that fit in here.
Dominic Carbonaro: so Latam has a ton of amazing artists, actually. Like there's a, a lot of amazing art talent in Columbia, Argentina, Brazil, even, you know, we have some community members from Venezuela. And so That region is not as prevalent in crypto as I think it should be. Like, there's a lot of amazing artistic talent down there and you know, we want to help foster that innovation on average.
So we want to target that region onboard a lot of artists in that region and get them, you know, get them used to this idea of creating NFTs, right? So we can solve the content side. We can, bring out some of that work that maybe just never would've been addressed because a, an education issue, a technological barrier issue, whatever it may be, and start to kind of foster those communities down there and grow that region more.
Pierre Gervois: I, I'm very excited when you talk about crypto art because I, I, I'm a crypto artist myself, so I, I'm always want to learn and discover new, new projects. So what kind of, art forms do you see on Avalons? Is it. Visual arts music. Is it like abstract art or portrait or dance or crypto sculpture?
What type of art form do you see?
Dominic Carbonaro: Mostly right now what we're seeing are like people who are doing one of one, just like almost even sometimes hand drawn pieces and then converting them. I think what we're going to start to, what you're going to start to see over the coming months we've been working on an id like a process in a program here for some time that should be, you know, starting to roll out here pretty soon, is we wanna address the full scope of the market, right?
So we want amazing, one of one artists you can think of people like X copy. even like people in that space who are doing like more one of one pieces or like, they make a piece and do the open edition one of 25. So we're gonna start to bring some of that to life. We also want see more generative art people who are using, you know, code to make art.
We think that's a fantastic fantastic vertical. No one's currently doing that, so we're gonna be building out some of that. We wanna also start to tap into some AI art, so we're. We're starting to see a lot of really great creative AI art start to come out. Someone sold a piece maybe a few months ago for like 50, $60,000.
I can't remember her name, but it was kind of like a big foundational AI piece. So that's a market we also want to address. as far as music goes in the N F T space, music and fashion are definitely our like one a, one B approach after art and, and creative. I can't tell you how that looks yet.
you know, it's, it's I don't know. You know, it's like there's a lot of traditional power players. We think it's gonna start at the grassroots ground up, and I haven't seen a clear path on how this stuff integrates yet. Doesn't mean it's not going to, it's just, you know, it's something I'm still kind of researching and trying to figure out.
So those are priority for us, for us next
through this year.
Elizabeth Haas: how do you reach out to your customers? Do you train them in your tools? How do you find the artists?
Dominic Carbonaro: we have a program we're gonna be rolling out here soon that's going to be addressing that. I can't say too much on this, but, what we have found so far that, resonates the most in the community.
is that Artists tend to be very, most of the times very giving people. And a lot of them have very humble beginnings and they're very open to giving back and helping other people, along the journey of like, Hey, I maybe do art, but I don't know what this is, or I'm an artist, but I think NFTs are a scam and they destroy the environment.
So there's an educational component that, we're gonna be working on. And there's a, Hey, I've done this. I can show you how and I. think you could kind of piece that together. But that's kind of our approach to it, It's taking people who have accomplished themselves in the space, who have resonance in the space, and then, empowering them to teach others and onboard others.
Elizabeth Haas: About how many artists are you working with or are using your platform today?
Dominic Carbonaro: Right now that number is, is low. It's not extremely low, but it's not as large as we'd like it. So, I'd say anywhere, like I think we compiled a list and there's like 50 to 70. but we want to really like hyper grow that number. And so that's really what the focus is going to be is, is going to be artists, and onboarding as many as we can over the next six months
Elizabeth Haas: is that something of a pivot for the company that you're moving from? Where you were to a real focus on this.
Dominic Carbonaro: I wouldn't necessarily say it's a pivot. I started in June, NFTs, kind of like we, there was no real, no one really owned the verticals, so there was no real focus on it. I think it's a pivot in terms of the market because the market is very focused on one specific thing, which are profile pictures.
and, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have that stuff as well, and it's gonna be a part of what we're doing. But it's always been hard for me to say, Hey, in two years from. These profile picture things will be what NFTs are at their highest level. Right? Like when I was in New York I had an amazing chance to tour Pace Gallery and meet and meet some people at, at some galleries in, in that.
And I saw that, that market and I'm like, it's a huge market. There's so many, there's so many complex intricacies of how it moves the different levels of galleries. And so I'm like, there's no doubt in my mind that those things eventually are going to be Rem. in a digital space and there will be gallery 1, 2, 3, eventually museums, same types of concepts.
And so I anticipate over the next, you know, coming years, those worlds just start to merge more. And I think the traditional art market was 50 billion. I don't want to quote this wrong, but something really, really large. And so like if you asked me do I think the NFT space has the ability to merge into that and become really big, I would say that's a very high probability.
And there's a. Amazing real fundamental use cases that I can get out of that. And PFPs, I'm, I'm still trying to figure out their, their fit, right? Like outside of just speculative gambling assets, which is fine. There's something wrong with that. People that's, everyone's allowed to address the market and play it the way they'd like, and we're gonna help onboard some of that stuff.
Cause I think there's some creative things around identity there. But, a, I would say it's not a popular thing to do right now.
Elizabeth Haas: As you're talking about it, it's really not the digital. it's digital art as opposed to baseball cards.
is that fair? As, as you see the future of this, do you think the digital collectibles will have less value? Will it be a, you know, versus digital art, which could be collectibles, but, but you know what I'm talking,
my distinction.
Dominic Carbonaro: I think it's very clear if you, if you say, Hey, digital art, it makes sense. Cause anyone who's ever been like in the arts, they're like totally understand it. Where the collectible side people get slightly confused on is like specifically around the profile picture stuff, right?
Cause it's, it, it looks like it's just like a trading baseball cards. And I agree to an extent, but profile pictures do have a few key deliverables that I don't think are, that you can get elsewhere, but they exist in our current space. So like, one is this concept of identity and community so that, you know, a lot of this, a lot of the, a lot of the, the, the blockchain, the, the crypto community lives on Twitter and it's very heavily anonymous.
And so you need a way to express your identity in that community and profile pictures uniquely fit that say like, Hey, I am this thing. Right? And so that's. I think they serve or have the potential to serve a way to like flex your status, right? In a digital space like a Lambo or a Rolex, right? Something that shows like I have status, wealth, and power.
My, my only problem is when I, when I get into these conversations is people say like, well, they can be like Rolexs. And I'm like, well, the difference is, you know, Rolex has been around hundreds of years. Presidents have worn them. They have a really long, like a big stain power they, they have status because they have years of proving out that status.
It's hard for me to say, Hey, a profile picture, which has been around a year and a half is going to carry the same status over a long period of time as Rolex. That's just, it's a very hard, like maybe there's a lot of potential that it could be that, but it's very hard for a brand to continue on that long and carry that status that long.
Right. Rolex has done it. Scucci, Pradas, Vuittons, but these are legacy brands that have kings and queens and presidents and senators wearing their products. So I, I think that the, the potential is there. Will it get there? I think the verdict sell, but I think it's possible.
Elizabeth Haas: So if you were giving an advice to somebody like Fanatics who just sold their interest in the card business or another sports entity, would you say focus on tickets, not on digital collectibles? or is there something else you would do
Dominic Carbonaro: I would say probably selling just digital collectibles is a few years away. Right. And it's very similar to saying like, in in the educational space, everything's gonna be, I've heard how many times have you heard this? Everything's gonna be an ebook. No one's gonna want books anymore. Maybe, maybe years now after people have been way more accustomed to it.
I watched my nephew, he's on a phone twenty four seven. He like, he's very way more like digital friendly. So maybe, maybe digital collectibles are too early and people just, you know, people with money still want a baseball, they still want a Pokemon. I grew up with Pokemon cards. I didn't grow up with digital Pokemon cards.
Right. So I think that space might just be a few years away from the collectors actually, like, wanting to participate in a, in like, I actually own these. I would say if you want to enter the digital collectible space, there has to be more than just like it's a picture. Like you gotta have a component to it that makes it gamified and fun, right?
Because at the end of the day, you're just, you're, you're trading, the only reason you're buying them is to to either just buy them and hold them forever or to buy them. To trade them. And if you're gonna do that, add a mechanic in there that makes it engaging and fun as opposed to just you open a pack, you get five cards and that's it.
Cause people will just want physicals cause that's what they've done their.
Elizabeth Haas: So, so if I'm hearing you right, what you're saying is on the digital and digital collectibles, if it's gamified and. it may do something right now, but as just a collectible to hold and sell
Dominic Carbonaro: Yeah. Who? Well, yeah. And it's like, who are you? Who are you selling to? Right? Like, if you're gonna be selling digital baseball cards, who are your buyers? Majority of them buy baseball cards because they like baseball cards. Right. They frame 'em, they put 'em in the boxes, they go to the shows, they, they, they display 'em.
Right. So it's like, it's like if you're gonna address that market, then you need to address that market and that market likes physicals. So like, I'm not saying that, that there's no potential for digitals to exist, but like, I don't think it can just be like, we're gonna take this physical thing and make it digital.
I don't see the market wanting that. You gotta add a primitive, make it new and.
Pierre Gervois: well, Dominic Carbonaro, thank you so much for being with us at the whole Met Ever podcast. So we, we wish you Good luck at Avalanche and, and, and good luck to, to the avalanche ecosystem. And we definitely love to, you know, keep in touch and learn more about the future project and use case at Avalanche.
Thank you very much and, and have a wonderful day.
Dominic Carbonaro: Thank you both.
Elizabeth Haas: Thank you. Take care. Appreciate your time.