I went to NFT LA and lost many brain cells
It was basically comic-con without the comics. A giant con.
TL;DR: Allen hates the NFT LA experience, but appreciate some of the more nuanced exhibits. Plus Butt NFT and Yang Gang.
Hi all,
I went to NFT.LA last week. It was okay. I sat through 2 day’s worth of programming to give you only one take away. Read on for more. Shoutout to Andy H. for making the experience happen.
Couple of notes from me:
I am thinking of expanding what I write. Wednesdays will maintain it’s same level of tech focus, but I also want to find a time and place for Career Break learnings - which are the fuel for this newsletter - and also enhance your online content diet with where I am getting my inspiration from. Short form Mondays, “Tech” Wednesday, and Reflection Friday?
Crypto taxes for individual is completely not at all the same as crypto taxes for a businesses. I’m currently mentally processing the EY and PwC technical guidances so that you don’t have to. Thanks to Armando V. for those shares.
As always, you can find TL;DRs and graphics wherever possible!
In Case You Missed It
NFT 200 - Why would you buy a JPEG?
NFT 100 - It’s a Start
PoS vs PoW - What’s with the techy acronmyns?
Sections You Can Skim To
WTF is NFT LA?
WHAT WERE YOUR EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS?
WHAT ELSE DID YOU SEE?
WHAT’S YOUR MOST VALUABLE TAKE AWAY?
WTF is NFT LA
TL;DR: Comic-con without the comic; definitely a con.
Priced between $19.95 (Online only) to $1500 (VIP Status) NFT.LA is basically what I imagine Comic-Con to be without the Comics. A con. I know, a tad harsh, but hear me out. NFT.LA is supposed to be this riveting experience that explores the intersection between the digital-native world and real-life.
Instead, I got panel-style talking head presentations for all the official programming, and terrible “NFT Games” that make Flappy Bird the gold standard. At least that game was fun.
You seem to have harsh comments.
I do. Granted, I went to Day 2 and Day 3.
I expected more. Alas, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say I had some decent takeaways. However, if you think about the environment and context of those takeaways, I’ve had better experiences opening a browser and listening it through there, than listening it in person.
The experience is this: Show up, see a bunch of QR codes everywhere. Every QR code you scan is a “treasure hunt experience” or a “cool reward” from various companies that requires you to spend about 3-5 minutes registering and creating your account with them before claiming the reward. You’ll do this X amount of times during the conference before you simply stop.
You’ll then choose talks at random that might interest you. You show up, its a classic panel of 3 + 1 moderator, talking at an audience. In the discussion there is a level of generic-niss. How generic? You can replace the keywords “Web 3” and “NFT” and “Blockchain” with “IOT”, “5g”, and “Analytics”. It comes off as a fad for them.
You’ll go to the exhibit halls. Most were pretty garbage, the next section shows the highlights.
WHAT WERE YOUR EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS?
TL;DR: Blockchain Training Alliance for professional development, Furballs for video game use cases, Fame Lady for community case study, and PizzaDAO for Free Pizzas.
Blockchain Training Alliance
A practical, tactical training group with business, project management, solution architect, and developer courses. Their instructors were pretty high energy and engaging and I got recharged by them, which is a miracle in itself. They offer certifications.
This one is a novel concept. You get NFT Furballs that are applicable to every single game these developers are making. Talking with the founders, they essentialy want to be able to create multiple mini-games to full-on games where your NFT acts as your unique character and party-members to bring around game to game. Now that’s a great use case.
Fame Lady
This one stood out as the most unique community story of them all. Fame Lady Squad is a women’s centric NFT/Crypto/Web 3 community. This $1.5m NFT project gained a significant following and some level of fame, but as time went on, it was discovered that the group was led by Russian Dudes. The community had the rug pulled on them, basically.
The community felt so strongly about maintaining the brand that actual women leaders and allies formed a coalition, did the voting, and claimed the accounts & and the leadership of Fame Lady, instating actual Women leaders.
That’s right, they derugged themselves. This is a case study for how communities mean so much more to people, even without ever meeting each other physically. This one happens to be for women who bought their first NFTs and are beginning their NFT journeys.
PizzaDAO
Pizza DAO is the best DAO because all they want to do is through the world’s biggest pizza party. How did they get my attention? There was a dude offering pizza for free, and they were from a super-local pizza place.
Anyway a DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. I’ll explain what this is in another article, but the short explaination is a DAO is a member-owned community without central leadership, utilizing blockchain technology protocols to enforce financial management.
Every time you buy a PizzaDAO NFT, you are funding free pizzas for everyone around the world. That’s about it. And right now they are wanting to throw a big pizza party.
WHAT ELSE DID YOU SEE?
TL;DR: I LIKE BIT BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE.
So besides having Nelly and Steve Aoki doing performances, Sir Mix-A-Lot was there.
He was there primarily to introduce his project called Bit Butts, 6666 NFTs launching on May 5, 2022, with a major portion of gross proceeds to be donated to organization who focus on colorectal cancer research and education. There are 6666 original, non-AI generated NFTs of Butts, and you can have a butt in your wallet. Why 6666? Because it looks like butts.
Sir Mix-A-Lot gave the run down on how the music industry works, and how captive artists are to their publishers/agents/distributors when it comes to producing music. He believes NFTs can be a financially viable way for an independent artist to remain relatively independent, leaning heavily on the fundraising capability of NFTs, and how it can reward die-hard fans and seed-level supporters.
I also heard from Macy Gray. She was quite late, and she has no idea what she’s doing or saying.
WHAT ARE YOUR TAKEAWAYS ON NFTs?
TL;DR: Perceived Value is the main ingredient.
I’ll publish a more thorough follow up, but here are my takeaways now on NFTs:
NFTs are a great vessel to do business based on perceived value and brand image. Aka, the intangible part. It’s not the only use case, but it is currently the strongest.
Traditional Stonks: If you are looking at this with a traditional stock analysis lens where you analyze 10k’s, look at YoYs, and look at EBITDA, this be the wrong place.
Sneakers & Bags: If you are able to look at this with the same lens of how people buy sneakers and luxury bags, you have a head start.
Belief in something greater in people: If you ultimately believe in the people behind an NFT and community, you are also in the right place.
If you are someone that would wait in-line 3 hours or 3 days for something, or someone, NFTs are probably for you. Your favorite brand or artist you are waiting for hasn’t interacted with you with NFTs yet.
NFTs for the sake of NFTs are worthless, or pretty hard to evolve a business model around.
Characters without stories, and stories without a world, are relatively meaningless in the long run. (Ask the comic book guys this one)
The current NFT buying experience sucks. Anyone who implements convenient payment processing such as Credit Card transactions will gain adoption.
I swear if I see another QR Code NFT experience and it’s not this magnifient beauty, I’m going to lose it.
WHAT’S YOUR MOST VALUABLE TAKE AWAY?
TL;DR: YANG.
I guess I’m part of the Yang gang with this photo. LOL.
Context:
I was super exhausted on the last day and decided I couldn’t wait another 3 hours for the Andrew Yang keynote, so I left early. I saw him there, in a suit, with no one paying attention to him. So I walked up and broke that selfie seal.