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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