Zima Red ep 76: Donnie Dinch

We Are Only 1% Into The NFT Revolution

Primer: Donnie Dinch is the CEO of Bitski, a platform where people can create, buy, and sell NFTs. He returns to the Zima Red Podcast to share updates on his project and his thoughts on NFTs, the Metaverse, DAOs, and many more topics.

Origins

• 2nd time on the Zima Red Podcast

• Founder of Bitski, a platform where people can create, buy, and sell NFTs

• Added a storefront for NFTs since his last chat with Andrew

• Raised Series A from Andreessen Horowitz

• Has been in the space for over 3 years at this point

Bitski

• Anyone can sign up with Bitski

• Once they are in, it's a self-serve product. People can build their own custom site/storefront or use their standard storefront

Team Size

• Team consisted of 4 people. A lot of work for just 4 people

• In rapid growth mode now. Grew team size to 10 - 11 people

Finding People To Hire

• Takes a lot of effort to find people. They maintain a very high bar from an engineering perspective

"We think NFTs really contextualize the utility of blockchain in a way that reaches a much larger audience." - Donnie Dinch

Hardware Security Modules

• Wanted to offer a wallet service that makes it easy to connect to different apps, has a single sign-on, and abstracts away private key management

• For security, the private keys had to stay in the hardware. However, they could not find a service provider that allows them to both keep keys in the hardware and sign transactions in that hardware

• Went straight to the manufacturer and added their own stuff on it. Effectively allows them to have close to 4 billion keys that they can provide almost like a lockbox per wallet

User Traction

• Has been growing

• Lots of room for NFTs to grow in utility. Most are still speculative in nature

• Inbound of different customers that bring in their own fans into the system

• Added 100,000 wallets since last fall

• Approaching 150,000 total wallets

Anything To Share About Bitski

"I think that the big hurdle was there was a lot of us that were all excited about it, but we didn't have the buy-in from users, we didn't have the buy-in from different platforms, or different content creators, and now everyone's about it." - Donnie Dinch

• Big improvements coming for their wallet towards the end of the year

• Will be publishing their developer tools

• Narrowing down their focus to be the commerce platform for the Metaverse

Raising From Andreessen Horowitz

• Their launch in February coincided with the broader audience coming into NFTs

• Their platform allowed people to participate using a credit card, lowering the barrier to entry

• Funds started to show interest in Bitski

• Worked with Sriram Krishnan from Andreessen Horowitz's consumer team

Most Interesting Topics To Him

• The level of experimentation in the NFT space

What Is The Metaverse

"But I really do believe that the metaverse is not at one new place. But it's going to be a constellation of places that we've already spent time in." - Donnie Dinch

• More and more places will support standards and allow content to have interoperability with one another

• Think that there will be exponential growth for interoperability between platforms

• In the history of software, a lot of the best features and utilities came from emergent behaviour

• When building an app, have to build it in a way that you are facilitating users to perform actions. This will facilitate emergent behaviours to manifest

Thoughts On Open VS Closed Systems

• Open systems provide a certain amount of de-risking of being tied to one platform

• Blockchain space is driven by the same principles that have gone into open source development

• Open systems allow for a lot of economic activity to happen

Metaverse And Economic Value

• Think that the first step is for the Metaverse to allow people to express themselves in the same way that they do in the physical space

• Economic value/activity is a natural progression from the self-expression stage

Expressing Their Personalities In The Metaverse

• It's human nature to express their personalities

• People do not differentiate between their online self and offline self. Both are aspects of the same person

• People are spending more time in digital spaces to connect with others. The need to express themselves will continue to perpetuate in the digital environment

NFTs Are The Atomic Unit Of The Metaverse

• NFTs are basically digital things that people can own

• Blockchain is simply a global source of truth of who owns what and what that stuff can do

• For economic activity to occur in the Metaverse, there must be goods and services that are exchanged

• NFTs are a globally accepted standard/the atoms that make up the Metaverse

NFTs On Other Blockchains

• Andrew: Many blockchains are now developing NFTs. Is this a cause for concern?

• In terms of NFT to NFT composability, it becomes more complex when they are on different platforms

• From a social app/virtual world standpoint, it doesn't really matter which chain the NFT is on

• Expect that there will be more accepted standards across chains for NFTs

• Thinks that there will be a few different fragmented chains that people are using and with different interfaces to help manage that

The Creator Economy

• Someone who makes a living on the internet

• Crypto and NFTs enable new ways to make money and industries that otherwise wouldn't exist. They level the playing field for a lot of economic activity that otherwise has high barrier to entry

Thoughts On DAOs

DAOs are very compelling and interesting

• Over the next few years, DAOs will move away from a fun, experimental mode into something that is utilized by most people

• The experiments and use cases will inspire products that get built down the line

• Will compete with other organizational models in the future

Will DAOs Take Over Corporations And LLCs?

• Hard to predict

• Primitives that are being built will eventually become robust enough to supersede traditional organizations

What Are Some DAOs That Are Doing Cool Stuff?

• Flamingo DAO and their experimentations on how they can distribute value to different creators

• PleasrDAO and their support of nonprofits

• Loved what Gabby is doing with Yield Guild Games. Symptomatic of a metaverse where a whole layer of economics is being built on a game like Axie Infinity

Thoughts On Play-To-Earn

• Longevity of play-to-earn is inarguably questionable

• Want to yield to the optimistic side and support this fledgling idea that is adding value to a lot of people

• Thinks that play-to-earn will be a construct that will be integrated into existing games. Games will allow players to come in and add value to the experience of those games

Biggest Threats To The Metaverse

• Thinks that the Metaverse is inevitable

• The biggest threat would be when the Metaverse would manifest

• Don't really think of it as a threat, but more as hurdles that are to be overcome in order for the Metaverse to hit critical mass and proliferate

Any Thoughts To Share

• Excited about the next S-curve/inflection of interest into NFTs

"I think that most NFTs that we've seen to date have been, you know, 1995 websites. We've got picture, we've got text, we think it's very, very cool. As we know, the web browser became a much, much more powerful platform than just displaying that content." - Donnie Dinch

10 Year Grand Vision For Bitski

• Help power the commerce layer of the Metaverse

• Needs 3 important components:

  • Creation component: Individual creators, brands, companies

  • Places component: Social media apps, virtual worlds, games

  • End user who owns stuff

• Bitski's opportunity is to provide all the services that make that 3-sided marketplace a reality

• Bitski is considered successful if the time, effort, and value that people create in a digital place is similar to what they are seeing in a physical place

Favourite Video Game

• Starcraft 1 and 2

Single Favourite NFT

• An Axie that Jiho gifted to him

• Met Jiho at a random event in New York at the beginning of 2018

• Has the most sentimental value for him

Most Controversial Thought On NFTs

• Don't agree with "Not your keys, not your NFTs"

• If people are not comfortable with private key management, they should have the option to use a service provider to manage it for them

If You Could Improve One Thing In The NFT Space

• Enforce global royalties across all marketplaces

• Impossible to implement in a meaningful way. Need a coalition in agreement on how royalties are handled across all marketplaces

• Not so much a technical challenge, but more of the acceptance of the idea

Metaverse In 3 Years

• Interoperability of cosmetics and digital goods across different platforms

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