Zima Red ep 103: Josie, Ben & Chris - CyberBrokers: Foundations Of A New Universe
Primer: Josie Bellini, Ben Heidorn, and Christopher Chapman presents CyberBrokers, a first-of-its-kind art collectibles ecosystem centered around 10,001 unique and fully on-chain CyberBroker NFTs. Why 10,001 instead of 10,000? Get the answers to this question and more in this episode of the Zima Red podcast.
Background
Josie
Heard about Bitcoin in college
Studied finance
Worked in private wealth management
Andrew helped her discover crypto again. Dove into it together
Left her job for crypto. Got back into art and design
At the end of 2017, she made Genesis, her first piece of crypto art
Showcased her artwork at a conference. Met Marguerite/Coin Artist. Got to know the rest of the Neon District team
Ben
Found crypto in late 2015
Just completed his Computer Science PhD
Started an online shop but wasn’t good at it
Followed Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin. He put out a puzzle and people tried to solve it
Was working with a group of people and they managed to solve it
“That was like the first holy shit moment I ever had in crypto, was seeing a wallet open up with like 230 Litecoin, like 20 bucks a pop at the time. And it blew my mind that you could go through the whole process and discover a private key and it opened the door.”
- Ben Heidorn
Found out about Coin Artist
Started following the crypto puzzle scene
Coin Artist started a secret project and he worked with her
Subsequently, started Neon District with Coin Artist and Diego Rodriguez
Chris
Have been making games since he was a child
Won an award in junior high for computer graphics
In college, he majored in Computer Science with a minor in fine art
Had many different roles:
Bartender —> running an interactive ad agency —> database developer —> making web-based MMO games —> Disney
Discovered Decentraland in 2017 and participated in the land sale
Left Disney for Decentraland
“And so I totally ejected from Disney. And everybody thought it was crazy. Because, like, Oh, you're gonna go get paid in Bitcoin? I mean, it was like, come and find out. Yay. But at the time, everybody thought I was insane.”
- Christopher Chapman
Started hanging out with Ben and Coin Artist. Helped out with Plasma Bears and Neon District
When the downturn came, he moved to Sandbox to help them do their multiplayer backend stuff
After that, he moved on to help Sillytuna with Soulcast
Ben invited him to CyberBrokers and he joined them
CyberBrokers
Josie wanted to create a 10,001 crypto art collectibles
Was looking for the tech component. Thought of Ben and Rhea Myers
Started showing them her art ideas
The process took a long time and her ideas changed along the way
The art is stored on-chain as SVG files
Chris is creating a universe for CyberBrokers
What Inspired Chris And Ben To Work On CyberBrokers?
Chris
“I'm sure Ben's gonna say the exact same. Like when Josie says do you want to collaborate? Yes. Like how do you say no to that? That's just crazy.”
- Christopher Chapman
Ben
In May 2020, Blockade Games was in a rough spot and he was working on multiple projects
Chris, Sillytuna, and himself were working on Metaboss
Chris and himself were working on Plasma Bears on the Loom sidechain
The Loom team shut down the chain and this made him think about permanence
Josie reached out to him and he accepted. Discussed about the longevity and permanence of the project
In hindsight, putting things on-chain was an expensive decision
What Is A CyberBroker?
Wanted them to facilitate transactions in the Metaverse
Wrapped a cool narrative around it:
Cataclysmic things have happened to the world
There’s a huge ice age
Humanity has moved underground
The government hook 10,000 people to a rig to get them into the Metaverse
Something went wrong and they are stuck there forever. These people are the CyberBrokers
Each CyberBroker has different talents and are good at different things
Will be releasing more lore through a series of short stories
The Art For CyberBrokers
Has Cyberpunk inspirations
Took some inspiration from crypto and the art pieces that Josie did
Reached out to Azamat Khairov, an artist. He agreed to collaborate
The SVG File Type
Josie
Knows about the file type from the design side:
Can be resized any way you want
Is not pixelated
Drawing vertex points and connecting them together
Ben
Can store other file formats besides SVG on-chain
However, only SVG consists of multiple layers that could be swapped out
SVG layers are stored independently but are compiled together at the end
Images are stored in lieu of a contract. The mechanic was taken from Nick Mudge of the Aavegotchi team
Had to use a compressor that translated the SVG into bytecode
Had to provide an on-chain Javascript translator to read the raw data
Why Is Putting Things On-Chain Expensive?
The store operation is one of the most expensive transactions that you can do on-chain
It has become more expensive to deploy contracts as well
Why Do CyberBrokers Have Talents And What Do They Do?
Have 50 different talents, grouped together in classes
Different types of talents:
Explorer talents
Warrior talents
Creator talents
Services talents
One of the characters in the story that they are publishing is called Zinc. He’s a clean-up crew guy that repairs glitch pixel pieces throughout the Metaverse
Everyone CyberBroker has a job in the Metaverse
Building a world out of the 10,000 CyberBrokers
Why Are There 10,001 CyberBrokers Instead of 10,000?
Josie always keep number 1 in the crypto art/NFT she does
For CyberBrokers, she wanted 10,000 dispersed. Hence, the additional 1 for herself
“So I've always wanted to make sure that I keep one of the editions. And so that is always the way that I've done that and it's also in a sort of way, like investing in myself and my own work.”
- Josie Bellini
What Can People Do With The Assets? Do They Own The IP?
Josie
They get an on-chain piece of badass art
It’s a foundational piece to everything that they have been building
Chris
Is a giant fan of permissive licenses
Projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Forgotten Runes Wizards have gained traction because of their permissive licenses
Want to do the same thing for CyberBrokers
Details On The Sale
Did not want to reveal information beforehand as people will speculate which parts are rarer than the others
Goal is to provide the best possible experience for buyers
Want people to pay a fair good price and to be happy with the CyberBroker they got
Will not be a public sale as it results in gas wars and whales winning the majority of the sale
Sale will be allow-listed, with people being a part of the community, the Discord, Twitter followers, newsletter subscribers qualifying for the sale
The public is still going to be able to participate
How Do They Prevent Their Website From Going Down?
Still finalizing the details as to how the site is going to work
Will keep the backend light and focus on the frontend
Everybody will know that they can mint at any time they like. There’s no rush to do so
Long-Term Vision For CyberBrokers
Going to continue with the lore
Will be creating some puzzles for people to solve
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