Primer: Andrew Steinwold first met Jin in NFT NYC in February 2019. Jin was the one who opened Andrew's eyes to NFTs, VR technology, the Metaverse, and what all these technologies could be. In this episode of the Zima Red Podcast, Jin brings listeners through a tour of his life and how all these pieces of technology fit together.
Background
Been in crypto and VR for the latter part of a decade
Even before crypto, he was interested in P2P technologies, cryptography, and hacker art stuff
Did a lot of video game modding in the past and was a MMO junkie
"So I just basically lived on the internet and love to make stuff DIY." - Jin
How Did His Interest With The Internet Started?
To him, the internet was a place of freedom, where one can do anything and be anybody they like
Love the maker and hacker culture
How Did He Get Interested In VR?
Was inspired by Palmer Luckey's Kickstarter video
Palmer Luckey was the original inventor of the Oculus
He had a super successful Kickstarter campaign that blew past the goal he had
Was binge reading a lot of Cyberpunk and Sci-fi books at that time
Got his dev kit and felt that it was going to be the next big thing
What Type Of Virtual Worlds Was He Into At That Time?
Was into Runescape and other MMOs
Was exploring MMOs with a group of friends
When Did He Get Involved In Crypto?
Heard about it through Silk Road
Lured him in to learn about blockchain and Satoshi Nakamoto
Got into crypto in 2011. Was mining Litecoin and Bitcoin on his computer
Are Cryptocurrencies And VR Needed For The Metaverse?
Thinks that it is needed
Thinks of blockchain as a public good
How Did He Form His Ideas On Crypto, NFTs, VR, And The Metaverse?
💡 Andrew first met Jin in NFT NYC in February 2019. Jin was the one who explained NFTs to him and made him see the bigger picture and how it intersects with this emergent Metaverse world.
Have been interested in building the open source VR scene since the beginning
Have been documenting his experiments on these technologies and publishing them online
Experimented with Decentraland. Found it limiting that there was only one viewer/official client for it
He is always thinking about ways to reduce friction and increase freedom
"It first really clicked to me with reading the Decentraland whitepaper about how it could be used and like their original demo was like a VR Burning Man kind of thing. And I thought that was so cool." - Jin
After exploring Decentraland, he started to explore other stuff like Cryptovoxels, etc.
Realized that NFTs are way more than just images on the blockchain. It could be used to represent anything, with virtual worlds the ultimate compositor of NFTs that could be made out of NFTs
How Do Virtual Worlds Help Us Understand The Potential For These Technologies?
Love to use Cryptovoxels as he can easily compare it to Minecraft on the blockchain
Uses Cryptovoxels as an ingredient in all his experiences:
Bringing his parcels with him anywhere
Viewing the city in a different way
Making a game within a game
"I don't think just NFTs in a virtual world is all that meta, I think, you know, to be truly meta, you gotta have like different representations of NFTs and different ways of perhaps experiencing the virtual world itself." - Jin
The Future Of Blockchain-Based Virtual Worlds
Thinks that virtual worlds will become networks and, eventually, turn into economies
Hope that blockchain games will integrate with the larger ecosystem
Virtual worlds are adopting common interoperable protocols and open file formats to optimize for preservation and interoperability
The metaverse is an emerging culture and lifestyle that is becoming more popular as we increasingly lead digital lives
Virtual worlds such as Somnium, Cryptovoxels, and Decentraland are being developed to be interoperable and interconnected with one another
Different virtual worlds can be viewed as different digital nations with their own communities, cultural standards, currencies, and vibe
What Is The Metaverse?
Could mean a couple of things:
Technical viewpoint as a set of open standards and formats
Social viewpoint where the Metaverse is an emergent cultural/social phenomenon
NFT adopters are really excited about the Metaverse as they have aligned incentives for this next version of the Internet
Thinks that the best version of the Metaverse is one where he can trust the code that's running and have sovereignty in the virtual world
Biggest Difference Between The Internet And The Metaverse
The Metaverse is a 3D Internet
The internet is like a single player experience while the Metaverse is more of a multiplayer experience
"I kind of see the Metaverse in a way where it's this new UI and UX layer and this new kind of data layer that's currently in development." - Jin
Our profile pages on centralized entities are now a 3D avatar in the Metaverse
Moving from looking at the web through screens to looking at it through glasses
Can The Metaverse Exist Without Decentralized Technologies?
Definitely need decentralized technologies
What Roles Do Communities Play In The Metaverse?
Sees communities playing a foundational role
We have the technology to build the metaverse but it's becoming more of a coordination problem (e.g. technologists building infrastructure, artists driving traffic through their creations)
Thinks that crypto is a necessary ingredient to form strong communities
Views the Metaverse as three different layers:
Global layer where the virtual economy takes place
Shared layer that consists of your social graph (networks, friends, group chats)
Local layer where people can be their true self/home space
Currently, a lot of people are centered on the global layer because that's where the economic incentives are
In the shared and local layers, there are more expectations of privacy. There are business use cases for these layers as some data are meant to be private
What Different Sectors Need To Be Built Out To Have These 3 Layers?
Interoperability between layers (i.e. bringing one's own stuff from the global layer to the local layer)
Privacy and security
Things are progressing pretty well. NFTs have been taking off and there is a mind shift to how we live digital lives
Are VR/AR Glasses Required For The Metaverse To Emerge?
Does not think that it is required. Same like webpages can be rendered in all sorts of different ways
What Are The Best Ways To Form A Healthy And Vibrant Community?
Ensure that people are aligned early on and have skin in the game
Create opportunities for people to co-create and contribute value to the network and be rewarded for doing so
Had experience in running the Metaverse Makers Meetup. Consists of a bunch of brilliant people working on interesting projects related to peer-to-peer open source virtual worlds/Metaverse stuff
Crypto helps to enable people to work towards a shared vision
His Ideal Entity (e.g. LLC, non-profit, DAO, etc.)
Would look like what MetaCartel has been doing
Is a strong believer in DAOs
Becoming easier to spin up a DAO as tooling has improved
Thinking of a Meta DAO that coordinates all the different groups of people together
His 90-9-1 Rule
💡 Jin has written something called the 90-9-1 rule where 90% are lurkers and do not add a ton of value, 9% are contributors that add some value, and 1% are creators who add the most value. Andrew asked whether is this true for every community?
When it comes to NFTs, owning a NFT does not make one a creator or contributor
Next phase of NFTs and DAOs is focused on how to incentivize people to go from that 90% lurker base to contributors and co-creators of the brand that they have shared ownership of
Sees a new genre of NFTs emerging with commercial rights where value gets looped back into the network
What Role Will IP Play In The Metaverse?
We are in a new era right now. NFTs with IP rights are still getting clarified
NFTs that come with commercial rights are becoming more sought after as their holders can do more with them
Interleave is working on an animation project tying in multiple NFTs together
Having NFTs with clearly defined rights would encourage others to use them in their work
Where Are We In The Growth Of The Metaverse Today?
At the beginning phase
Artists are climbing up the social hierarchy with their own brand
Plenty of artists are investing in other artists
Thinks that we are going to be there by 2030. It's just a matter of how much the Metaverse is corporation controlled vs people controlled
"We're at the beginning chapters of a new Renaissance that's happening on the internet, and artists and their patrons are, instead of being in Florence, Italy, it's more so decentralized between these different platforms that we're experiencing together." - Jin
Which Sector Within Crypto Is He Most Excited About?
NFTs that come with commercial rights
NFTs that are not just JPEGs/static images, but 3D things that can be integrated into games
Will AI Play A Role In The Metaverse?
Walking around in Virtual Market 6, a super large festival that happens in VRChat every 6 months
In this version, they have more billboards and people within the world to make it feel less empty
AIs will eventually become the native digital citizens of these virtual worlds. Each of them can come with different personalities
AIs could also collaborate with humans to co-create virtual worlds
WebXR and XR Dev Log
WebXR is an open API for how browsers talk to headsets
XR Dev Log is Jin's personal site where he documents a lot of projects across the WebXR space
Sees WebXR as a fundamental ingredient for the Metaverse. However, it has not progressed much due to a lack of investment in the space
Foresees Web3 playing a part in increasing investment in WebXR
Grand 5-10 Year Vision
Want to be able to put on a pair of glasses and be able to see holograms/objects that are owned by people, not by some corporation
Favourite Video Game
Smash Bros
It's pretty Metaverse-y in a way like Sandbox Game with the most crossovers of any game ever
Has a vibrant modding scene as well
Single Favourite NFT
Cubes from The Fungible Collection by Pak that he launched with Sotheby's
"I thought it was a really amazing form of performance art that Pak was doing across the internet. And the whole mechanism with burning cubes for Ash is brilliant. It's just like owning that cube and blurring the line between fungible and non-fungible, it's a true work of art." - Jin
Most Controversial Thought On NFTs
Most blockchain worlds are really boring
Doesn't find himself spending a lot of time in them
He will be revealing some Metaverse-y ideas that play into the idea of composability in the future
If You Could Improve One Thing In The Space
The whole UX and onboarding needs to be better
Who Does He Look Up To And Why?
Likes Balaji's tweets and the idea of the network state. He's a great futurist on many things
Looks up to Palmer Luckey as he got him into VR in the first place. He's a relentless inventor
NFT Ecosystem In 3 Years
DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs will come together
Crypto art is going to mix with gaming
Crypto artists are going to become the next rockstars
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