Solfate Podcast (00:00.152) We're building the space that people are going to hang out the rest of the time in between, if you will. Right now we do want to have some attractions that obviously draw people for that purpose and again become kind of a centralized hub. But even in between that time, you know, we want to be the place or the destination or the location where people genuinely want to go and spend their time and hang out and make connections. you know, when they're experiencing the world of star Alice. Solfate Podcast (00:30.988) yet another episode of the SolFate podcast where we chat with founders and builders in the Solana ecosystem. This was a great one today. Nick, you want to tell us a little bit about? Yeah, it was super good. We had Rick, the founder of Discover, one of the biggest social networks in Web3, I think. It's super interesting. We did get a bit technical. We're dropping some technical bits as we go. Rick, he's a technical founder. my favorite kind of people. but yeah, we talked about like, one hand, why social on web three, like why web three social, like what's the unique benefit there? Like what's, what's the value add that web three and blockchain can, can bring to social, but then also some, how should I phrase this? Like what's a, what's a con of it being on blockchain TLDR? It's, it was all public by default. So that's, that poses some interesting, restrictions in a way and like how to work around it and everyone's sort of figuring it out. Yeah, it was really, really cool. Yeah. think even for the non-technical folks, it was a good chat. It was a pretty mellow chat. Gets a little bit philosophical, right? About sort of the whys behind some of these things. Overall, it was very interesting to me. Like I definitely came in as someone who is not super big into socials, right? Like I use Twitter and that's about it. and, sort of left the chat feeling, okay, I should give discover a try, but also, you know, maybe there actually is some unique value prop of, of like, you know, blockchain coexisting with, with social, which is something that I hadn't really considered before. So lots of interesting things there. And then lastly, you know, he gave some, some words of motivation, I think to all builders at the end. They're really great. So, stick around, have a listen. Before we dig in, just a quick shout out to Phantom. Phantom's the preferred wallet of the SolFate ecosystem. We love partnering with Phantom. Also, if you have any dev needs, reach out to me. My dev shop Unboxed is here to help, whether it's Web3 or whether it's more traditional Web2 stuff, we're always around. And lastly, we don't ask this enough, but we would love to get... Solfate Podcast (02:51.022) know, like reviews and ratings on whatever podcast. leave us a review. know, like that really help, right? We'd love to reach a wider audience. And if you like the show, please help out. But yeah, let's dig in. Let's go. Nothing in this podcast is or should be considered financial advice. Any opinions and thoughts expressed are solely those of the individual. They do not represent the opinions of any entity. Enjoy. Give Nick a little high level overview and then, you know, we'll get to other stuff as we go. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I guess total, you know, high level of it is, so we pulled together, I guess, really myself and really just two, two other founders, one of which now has been poached by star Atlas. So that's a bummer, but where that's where a couple of us kind of put together the, the idea of the super Phoenix, based on the ship, right? So about, gosh, it's probably almost two years ago, star Atlas put out kind of those first few Titan ships, as like, available on the market. And so a lot of people were really interested in it, kind of hung out there for a bit. But ultimately, what I ended up doing was kind of putting a plan together around, you know, acquiring the ship and then effectively tokenizing or decentralizing the interest in it, right? Because these are so big within the game space. So ultimately, we came online in April, I'd been working kind of behind the scenes a few months prior to that. I raised some private equity, created it on LLC. negotiated with Michael Wagner and the folks over at Star Atlas. We purchased kind of the largest, you know, titan ship in Star Atlas's game, you know, universe, right? And then this particular one is kind of geared toward recreation, social activities, entertainment. That's kind how the vibe and the design is of it and the concept for it. So that's really been the whole driver. The idea is that, you know, we created an NFT collection for people to become sort of members. and be able to get access to the ship when it's fully fledged in Unreal Engine 5. But in addition to that, we're doing the traditional DAO token mechanism, because this thing is going to be a massive entity in the game. It's going to require a lot of players, a lot of coordination, all that kind of stuff. Not to mention it has huge revenue potential. So stewarding that ship, and rather than making it closed off private entity, this is our version of kind of Solfate Podcast (05:18.294) opening it up and making it kind of available to the public, if you will. Gotcha. That's super cool. So like, we've had, I have a little bit of context into Star Atlas in general. Like we've had Michael Wagner been on the show. And for the listeners who don't know Star Atlas, triple A game built with Solana Tech. Michael Wagner is the, one of the co-founders or he's just founder. don't remember, but he's one of the founders and he's the CEO of Star Atlas. And yeah, so like from my understanding, actually even better, can you explain like how this whole thing works of like this idea of like you and this company you set up and these investors that you've raised money from, you're buying an in-game asset and you paid, I don't know if you can disclose how much you paid for it, but like why pay that much for in in-game asset. I don't play video games, some of our listeners might, but I think that's like, I have some thoughts of why this is super cool and I would love to hear some of these details. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good point. And we do have, it is going to be kind of a two-tiered structure, so I guess to clarify that a little bit. Right now, the investment group is a private entity that's sort of facilitating the acquisition of the ship. the creation of the DAO, the brand, all the assets we're kind of creating, the NFT collection, et cetera. We kind of needed that traditional structure to sort of seed that and create that. Frankly, it's a bit of a mimic to what Star Atlas is kind of doing with their own design studio and how they eventually want to hand over the entire sort of game of Star Atlas, if you will, to the players via their own DAO token. That's kind of the long-term structure and goal. And so this is... very similar, just on kind of a smaller scale, sort of living with inside of that entity. So the idea is the same. Once we get the DAO fully up and running and structured, you know, the handoff of the actual ship asset and those revenues therefore would go to the DAO treasury, et cetera, et cetera. But as far as, yeah, why did we do this? Why did we get started? I can even add a little bit into talking to non-crypto, non-gamers about, you know, pooling funds to buy this thing. Solfate Podcast (07:37.656) Those were some very interesting conversations a year ago, as you can imagine. But again, I think that the value proposition is there. think it's really interesting. Personally, though, there is a leap that you kind of have to make. And I know for me, I had been invested in Star Atlas almost from the beginning, probably a few years back now. I really got pulled into kind of what they were doing with their white paper, specifically around the economics. think they're... They're, in my opinion, doing it relatively unique, even in the AAA game space, even in the Web3 space. The fact that they're building this really solid kind of economic base for what this game is going to be, I think that lends itself to these types of businesses and offshoots and opportunities for parties and players who are sort of outside of kind of that traditional insider gaming piece. So the idea then, yeah, why buy a $5 million? ship asset, right? The reality is these games, I mean, you can kind of look, I think the justification is some of that stuff comes from, you know, there's some precedent with things, you know, CSGO skins selling for $100, $200,000. I think I was just listening to a statistic the other day, I want to say that the third party, like kind of gray market, let's just say for like CSGO over like a last three or three to five year period was something in the order of, you know, 30 billion dollars and there's just insane amounts of money that's traded for game assets by gamers, know worldwide and that's still in kind of the traditional web to space so there and again, that's different than one ship a big price tag, but the fact that this they're building the economics to kind of support this whole idea of You know these economic game loops and how the value is accrued Through the whole ship system through the player system through the play to earn type of mentality We looked at it as the capacity for this ship to generate revenue and interest and kind of capture that whole social entertainment space within what Star Atlas is building, which is a triple A really universe, if you will, right? Metaverse, if we're still using that term these days. I think has well beyond the capability to exceed normal, what would I consider? Solfate Podcast (10:03.064) kind of normal return on investment for purchasing an asset like that. I guess to wrap it all up, when I was talking to investors who again are not gamers and we're even somewhat outside of kind of the crypto space, we're really purchasing a virtual venue from Star Atlas that we're going to be able to do a whole series of things with. And so if you kind of think of that as like, how much does it cost to own a concert venue or own a public racetrack, maybe in your local county, state, community, whatever, or. you know, any of the other types of, I just a bar or restaurant, a hotel, right? These are all the types of social experiences that are going to exist within this ship. And when you extrapolate that forward into the ability or the capacity for Star Atlas to kind of bring in players on a consistent basis, long-term, we just felt like it works, right? It makes sense. It easily justifies, you know, those valuations and those, and that thought process. And I've got a lot of comps on different comparable size venues and how we want to project that going forward. And yeah, let's go ahead and get back to the episode. that's interesting. So, okay, so to make sure I understand that so effectively you're you're purchasing this in game ship within the game of the universe of Star Atlas. And you're thinking of it like a concert venue that you said it's going to be entertainment sort of focused within the game. And you're going to run it effectively like a concert venue, you can have shops and. restaurants and things that each of the in-game characters can get these assorted in-game assets or things that they can have within their inventory or like probably boost their stats and things. Solfate Podcast (12:10.036) That is wild. Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, appreciate it. yeah. Because my initial thought was like, like, I remember when we had Michael on the show and he's like describing this and I'd seen some of his talks before of like, sort of how Star Atlas works. And he had this idea of like, we'll have these assets that people can own. And in my mind, I'm just like, okay, an asset that players can own, it's like a skin or their weapon or their players care their characters like assorted inventory things. But being able to quite literally own the playing field within the game effectively, where the owner of that playing field, much like a concert venue, you can basically control the entire experience and you can tailor the experience for whatever niche things you want to do. That is incredible. It may be a little cliche, but it is kind of like the beginning of ready player one, right? Where, where, it's like, you've got this metaverse and then you, and then you sort of have like, you know, properties within that, that, that various entities control and, and, you know, and, and obviously get profits from and that sort of thing, which makes a lot of sense because to your point, Craig, there already is massive sort of economic redistribution amongst players and and like trading various game assets and that sort of thing. I think a lot of the pushback on integrating Web3 with games is like, well, hold on, we already have commerce and games. But, you know, I think that's similar to the pushback of like, we already have a financial, a working financial system in the US. But that doesn't mean we can't make it better. That doesn't mean we can't remove barriers, improve capital efficiency. you know, shift the distribution of earnings a little bit away from centralized entities and a little bit more toward, you know, decentralized distribution back to those who facilitate it. There will always be centralized entities that like take some amount somewhere that's that's inevitable. But but I think like Web3 allows it to allows us to maybe redistribute things a little bit more based on actual contribution. Right. Solfate Podcast (14:33.966) is kind of how I see it. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to, you know, there is a gameplay aspect to it, of course, too. And so for folks who are maybe more akin to, you know, are in the stylus economy or in the Web3, you know, gaming space, they definitely look at what we're doing and say, you know, that's cool. It's a huge ship. It's got a bunch of potential earning potential in game in a play to earn, you know, environment, which is true. And it does have even as far as this game will go, these you know, these few Titan ships, if you will, have massively outsized influence in the game as well. And the game is going to have all kinds of layers of, you know, strategy and politics. And, you know, there's going to be gaming groups and guilds and teams and all these things. And so that's another component of this, right? So being a partial member, being a partial owner, having a say in not just, not just having a share of maybe say revenue and ability to participate in the social entertainment side, which is what we are focusing on. there's still a gameplay aspect. The ship still lives in this universe and has a pretty outsized, you know, disproportionate influence. And so being able to also influence that in some way. And there's also, you know, revenue models for that too. Again, there people who are playing Star Atlas now, even in its pretty early phases, you know, that are earning, right? With some of these large ships. And so that component still exists too, but I would argue, and I have, you know, begun to kind of pivot this message and, made this argument to folks who also need a little bit more, know, need me to help them connect the dots, if you will. And that is the whole, idea with kind of the social entertainment space and what that can become, not just from a revenue perspective, but just a general, you know, user acquisition, kind of creating sort of these social hubs and experiences that people want to participate in. And ultimately, our goal is to become a destination within Star Atlas, right? Because, and I've said this a couple of times, Star Atlas is building the game, right? They're building the game loops, they're building the environment, they're building the universe, they're building the ship, right? For us. And that's great, and that's going to, you know, that's why players come, they want to play the game, they want to be a part of it, all those things. But as most of us know, there's a huge social component to gaming in general, not just Web 3. And there's a whole lot of time spent where people just hang out in games, right? They're not maybe on mission or completely focused or they don't have their... Solfate Podcast (16:59.242) know, crew together to go accomplish whatever that particular goal is, there's a lot of time just spent hanging out and socializing. And so, you know, we feel like Star Atlas is building that game and those game loops, but we're building the space that people are going to hang out the rest of the time in between, if you will, right? Now we do want to have some attractions that obviously draw people for that purpose and again, become kind of a centralized hub, but even in between that time. We want to be the place or the destination or the location where people genuinely want to go and spend their time and hang out and make connections when they're experiencing the world of Star Atlas. That's cool. What level of like, for lack of a phrase, customization and control does Super Phoenix DAO have over the ship itself? Because in my mind, it's... in the typical Web 2 game studio, it's they design everything from the ground up. They put all the nooks and crannies and and, you know, they they decorate the interior and all that kind of stuff. They place the NPCs scattered throughout. Some NPCs are more useful than others. You you put a shop here, but this person is a, you know, a random conversation that just repeats four sentences on a loop for eternity. What level of control does and what level of input does Super Phoenix DAO have into the ship itself? Sure. No, that's a great question. You know, to be completely honest, it's probably it's a little fluid. So obviously Star Atlas has their their vision, their concepts, their ideas. Now, obviously, we're we're on board with the majority of that because that's what drew us to it in the first place. And the fact that it is very, you know, there's only a few Titan ships in the game and they all have very unique kind of designs and features for that reason. Right. They're kind of designed in different purposes. And this one is by far the most you want to call it recreational type of vibe, right? And has all of those kind of spaces intended to be within it. Now, as far as the details, what are the size of these spaces? Where are they going to be located? know, kind how that design element fits into it. You know, I've had very preliminary discussions with some of the folks over at the team. And because we're so early on, we will absolutely have, you know, the ability to kind of provide some guidance or some influence or, you know, help. Solfate Podcast (19:18.421) target maybe a mutual goal, right? So if there's something we're trying to achieve, let's say a certain space or a certain area, the team has been extremely receptive to those things, which is great. And so I think we will have input into kind of how the final product turns out, even though still needs to kind of fit within the larger vision and kind of the theme of it. And to be honest, one of the great experiences at Breakpoint recently, which I was able to be at and we kind of had a booth for the brand, which was cool. But being there with Star Atlas and whole team, I got to personally meet, you know, for the first time face to face, both, know, Danny Floyd, who's one of the other co-founders and kind of charge of that vision. And then, you know, also Gary Sanchez, phenomenal artist, was kind of in charge of, he's the director of kind of all of the ship design for the game. And so I was able to have some really great conversations with them. And, and afterward, you know, he was able to shoot me some of the behind the scenes, you know, kind of ideas, vision boards and some of those cool things. So You know, having some of those channels open this early, I think, has been very cool and we're kind of looking forward to what we can build out. Nice. I'm curious, what is the timeline on the game right now? You might need to get Michael back on to get specifics on all of these things. And you know, the game development is a long process and timelines definitely change. I think, this is just another, in my opinion, right, just kind of another kudos to the team and sort of how they're building out. They're doing it extremely iterative and it's constant community feedback. I mean, the discord is constantly, you know, in discussion and there's an anytime they make a tweak or a change or there's you know, something that's added or, you know, alters the current function of the game. People provide their opinions quickly and vocally. But the game is, the folks, the Star Atlas team has done a phenomenal job of taking all that into account and pivoting what needed. So I guess with that, what I'm saying is they do have some upcoming modules which they're going to begin to release and iterate on. I know a few they premiered at Breakpoint during the Star Atlas Impact Summit, which was their own side event there. Solfate Podcast (21:38.382) You know, it's coming up with, they're kind of doing like a whole command sort of feature where it's going to be a bit more top down and they're kind of building out sort of that web version, which is very cool because they get to build out a lot of the architecture and some of the game loops and things on the backend and how that implements to the blockchain, which is nice, but also gives it a really great kind of graphical update alongside of they're still building in parallel kind of the true. fully immersed, you know, UE5 game, where I believe the racing module is kind of the next one sort of on the docket to come out. So I believe it's going to kind of be coming out in these phases, right? And they'll add additional components, they'll add complexity, they'll add, you know, economic game loops as we go. But as far as we're concerned, you know, kind of let's say full end game state where the super Phoenix ship is completely built out functional and able to traverse the universe, if you will. you know, we're easily a few years out from that. Now, I think there's ways we've had some discussions, you know, there's ways to to get some of what we need for our community a little bit sooner, right, a little bit earlier. There's ways to do maybe certain instances within the ship that we'll be able to kind of utilize and get players into at some point. That would be functional, let's say ahead of the full, you know, three dimensional ship design and kind of accessibility. So there's there's ways to do that where we can kind of pull in pieces and parts that are more important to get to our users earlier. And even on that note, I could probably pivot a minute. Obviously, we're in this partnership with Star Atlas, but at the end of the day, there's also ability for us to work with other games and other teams throughout the salon ecosystem, which I was, again, able to make some really good connections and talk to folks at Breakpoint. And for example, one of those we're exploring right now is with the game portals. who's on Solana and that's a bit more kind of a Roblox builder. And so they've been extremely receptive to what we're building and kind of the idea and the brand and the entertainment space and obviously, you know, big fans of Star Atlas. So, you know, the reality that we could maybe get a Mace, simplified version of a couple of the ideas that we're trying to bring almost like an MVP, if you will, right? Of what we're going to have in Star Atlas down the road, but yet still create an interactive space that we could begin to Solfate Podcast (24:03.694) kind of test out how this is gonna work, how we're gonna functionally get folks in and have them engage in some kind of fun Star Atlas themed experiences, if you will. So that would be like Star Atlas themed experiences in portals? Potentially, yeah, that's what we're working on right now, yeah. Sorry, I'm just trying to understand this piece. Does that mean what you own is the IP of the ship and that you can sort of use it even outside of Star Atlas? Yeah, to an extent. So you're right, there is some nuance to the IP, right? Because right now the ship's not completely finished. You know, the IP around that is mainly conceptual. And so there are limitations in what we can kind of do or use with the IP from a, it really has to, it really boils down to what we're using to for-profit versus what we're just using as kind of experiential. StartupList has been extremely supportive in being able to use a lot of that content, let's say, for just kind of open marketing and general communications, that kind of stuff, is great. And they're very open source in general, right? The whole idea of it. I mean, they're creating SDKs that developers can use to kind of build additional components into that can function, reviewing all these transactions, blockchain, and kind of create their own tools for the game, which has been cool. And so we're looking for kind of the same ideas to, is to see, to stay within, you know, terms of service with the IP. So we're not out there profiting on direct star Atlas IP, right? That's there's some, obviously restrictions there, but when we're talking about just kind of creating some of these general experiences and ultimately, again, there's still some details to work through. So it's not, not promised by any means, but, and this is probably some alpha here. haven't even officially announced publicly, right? But, What we're working to do is create some dual kind of composability, if you will, for specific Star Atlas assets that could then be transferable and available in some version in portals. So you own, let's say you own a speed bike in Star Atlas, you hop over to portals in our portal space, and now you've got a version of that that you can mess around with in portals. Gotcha. That's cool. Solfate Podcast (26:30.934) Yeah, this is where the blockchain shines, especially Solana. Like, have the ability to have this true composability across these completely different ecosystems. Basically, if you have that shared underlying tech, that this shared networking layer of the Solana blockchain, you can actually facilitate these experiences for the players in the games. And even outside of games, like, you know, I've been... thinking a lot about payments and things like that, recently loyalty programs kind of stuff. And you can also imagine like maybe if there's people at a store in person, maybe the next break point, there's another Star Atlas booth. You know, if you are a member of Super Phoenix Down, you have your NFT that represents your membership, you can claim limited edition merch or things like that in person or online shopping of physical products that you can get actually shipped to your house. And you can have a digital representation of it in the game too. Like it's the ultimate dream of composability. I agree. It's very exciting and I've talked to a few folks about it and the same thing. Everyone is quite interested to see if we can, you know, kind of get this to go. And I agree with you. That is, in my opinion, that's one of the huge. the big concepts and kind of ideas behind building all these different things using the composability of Solana. And I understand why it really hasn't come to fruition yet, right? A, many of the games are pretty early on, and not just games, but projects in general. And it's not that they may be against it one way or another, but communities are still in the process of kind of curating their own content, right? And still building out their own platforms. So there's just not really... time or resources available to start building your own stuff and let's say someone else's platform, right? We're just not there yet. Even though that would be wildly beneficial for players, members, just community in general. But I feel like this is a really good spot for us as Super Phoenix Dow, because again, we're not building our own game. We're not building our own unique product offering or software platform or any of those things like most of the, let's say that most of founders in crypto space are building something new, which Solfate Podcast (28:44.15) is amazing and that's great. That's where we're at in the cycle. But I think it's so, and in some ways that often can feel like a weakness, right? We're just, we're sort of piggybacking or we're working, know, we're using the opportunity that Star Atlas is kind of providing to build this out, which I think is going to be, you know, going to work out phenomenally well. But the fact that now we can start to look at being that bridge between ecosystems, between communities. And, you know, both are on board because it's really a win-win when you talk about communities that are relatively separate from one another, maybe are aware of each other, but don't really cross play as much right now or those kinds of things. Creating these kinds of simple integrations start to bridge that interest between folks. And obviously we're looking to do the same thing and reach out to even some of the popular NFT communities, the MadLads and the folks like that. We know they're aware of all these different things and some of their members are participants of these other communities, but creating an actual a functional bond between you own an asset over here, now it's represented this way over here. I think everyone's really on board with that. There's just not a lot of incentive for the individual game companies to do it right now. So for us, I think it's a cool opportunity. We can hop in, kind of help facilitate some of those things. Obviously, working into kind of our brand and messaging while creating some of these experiential things that we ultimately want our organization to be about anyway. Yeah, it makes lot of sense, becoming the effectively the connective tissue between these different potentially isolated ecosystems where they because of the common base chain of Solana, you can have these you can like Super Phoenix Dow or other organizations can be the connective tissue. And like like you said, it's it's kind of like in a way you are helping to incentivize these two different organizations, this case Star Atlas and Portals to like help actually connect your liaisoning between them, I'm sure, and like convincing them. like that seems like it does feel like that is one of the missing pieces in a lot of these composability plays where because there's not necessarily the most benefit right now to do it, like everyone seems to have the same idea of like, this would be really nice if we had this connective tissue and this cross functionality in these different worlds. Solfate Podcast (31:08.206) But it's dedicating the time and resources to get there. But when you have something like Super Phoenix DOW, you can keep pushing them towards it closer and closer. So yeah, I love it. It's really cool. I was going to say, we've talked quite a bit about the future of Super Phoenix DOW, right? The in-game asset that you're trying to create, the experiences that you're going to make along with Star Atlas. And this conversation we're having right now about connecting ecosystems, I feel like is kind of bringing it back to the now, because we are talking about experiences that Super Phoenix DAO is already creating. And one of the things that has been most interesting for me in sort of being involved with Super Phoenix DAO through Unboxed has been that it feels very experience driven, right? Like everything that you're saying about your goal of sort of things being experiential and creating. creating unique experiences for users. Sort of, you it's interesting to hear you talk about it because I do feel like that's what you've been doing. Rather than having, you know, my tech team always sort of be thinking about like new primitives for the blockchain or things like that, you're always thinking what's the experience that we want to build out for next month or for a few months down the road. And there is some underlying tech stuff for for longer term things for like the DAO and governance stuff. I don't want to underplay that, but it has been really fascinating to see you thinking about it from an experience by experience standpoint for your community. Because I do think that is a little bit different than most people building on the blockchain. Most people building on the blockchain are like, what's the new tech I can build that's going to like facilitate a thing. And I think you being here and doing this with Super Phoenix DAO. is kind of a sign of maturation in Web3 in general, right? It's almost like hierarchy of needs type of thing, right? It's like you can't start thinking about fun experiences for users before some foundational elements are in place. And so the fact that you're here thinking about fun experiences for users is a sign that we've come quite a long way, and I'm kind of excited to see where it goes. Solfate Podcast (33:27.758) Anyway, I wanted to use that as sort of a pivot into talking about the now. Like what is Super Phoenix doing now? You know, what are you excited about and trying to bring to your community? Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And we can we can touch on that briefly, too, because obviously, right unbox has done a phenomenal job helping us out with with all of the tech from pretty much from day one. And to speak on that kind of experiential piece. Hey, you guys have executed phenomenal. I mean, it's been amazing. the comments we get, the support we get, the reactions that we get from the stuff that we've kind of built out, I would say, you know, together sort of, right? From a vision perspective and then an execution perspective has been great and it has been pretty unique. I think a lot of folks who can appreciate, you know, the type of development that goes into the things that we've already done up until this point and being that we've built them, you know, quite a bit from scratch, so to speak, right? On the website, being able to do the mint ourselves, being able to create kind of the functionality, the whole merge process, you know, earlier this summer. And then just, and you're right, you know, I did want to key in on things of like making sure the experience felt good, making sure the animations looked great. know, that folks kind of had that visual and audio type of combination experience when they, you know, when they bought their NFTs, when they, you know, went through kind of that process of verifying things and kind of clicking through, you know, the, the different offerings that we've had at this point, even most recently with the badges, right? Those were, I'd say relatively straightforward being kind of a collectible item that translated back to our early NFT holders. We still have folks that were like, this is so cool. We love the inventory. The setup looks great. You know, the functionality is so clean. It's so smooth. And so again, that's, I mean, you guys know you're much, much more than myself when it comes to UX UI, you know, people appreciate those things. They really do. And so even in this really early phase where I don't yet have a three-dimensional space to have everybody come hang out and experience a concert. What I do have is their experience interacting with us as a brand, and already that's been best foot forward, which has been awesome. And so, yeah, we're moving forward. of pushing forward on that whole idea. And so as far as the now goes, and James, you and I have discussed some of this stuff. I'm always trying to keep three to six months out and sort of the Solfate Podcast (35:51.82) you know, rolling roadmap, if you will. But yes, we're working on right now we're in the throes of kind of a new marketing push marketing campaign that will run real soon. Like we'll be announcing here in a couple of weeks, depending on where this airs, it might be about similar timeframe. And we'll be rolling out giveaways, community partnerships, a lot of announcements, a lot of just trying to get the buzz and social media activity up pretty consistent, pretty much now through kind of the end of the year. in anticipation for the actual DAO token launch, which we're targeting mid to late January. We'll kind of see how things end up with both marketing and tech and kind of how the traction goes here through year end. Obviously, the crypto market has a lot to do with that. So far, so good. The last week or two, can't complain. But we need to kind of take all those things into consideration and kind of keep pushing forward. That's the short term, right? Is really going to be this move toward the token, the token launch. Obviously we've got folks who have already been following us, you know, and members of the community now for the last three, six months are anticipating it because there's benefits yet for them. And then folks who are just, you know, discovering us now, which is, I would say just about every time I do, you know, podcast and interview of spaces, whatever we get, you know, a handful of new people that just haven't heard of us yet or, or seen what we're up to, which, which is to be expected, right? It's, it's early. But, you know, we're moving forward on kind of the organic growth and that I would say phase two, you know, moving into early next year, probably first quarter of next year is when we're really going to start looking at pivoting to those kind of fun gaming social kind of environment experiences and seeing what we can offer and bring to the table. I guess I can probably go down the path we're leaning toward based on feedback we've gotten from the community. As big and fun as concerts kind of sound is like a huge cool event to bring everybody in, that will probably be a little bit later stage. Right out of the gate, I think it's easier for us to, again, sort of work with the synergy of what Star Atlas is building and kind of the racing module and some of the 3D stuff they've already got kind of ready to roll. And so if we can facilitate some of that. Solfate Podcast (38:15.864) composability like I mentioned with portals. We'd like to offer kind of our first piece of the environment as being kind of a racer type fun experience that sort of mimics what would eventually be in the Super Phoenix itself. Like one of the domes in kind of the early concept art is supposed to be kind of this barren desert racetrack. Burning Man vibe, right, if you will. And so that's probably the first one we're going to kind of go after and see how it plays out. I love that. think it makes a ton of sense to like, in fact, I noticed this, you know, when we were just chatting a couple weeks ago, you talked about how Star Atlas right now has this like raffle type thing going on, the kind of big fun experience that they've created. And I thought it made a ton of sense for you to say, hey, let's lean into that and create kind of a targeted enhancement to that experience for Super Phoenix now. That's kind like what I meant by thinking it's really cool that you're thinking about the experience for your users. You know that your community is already in the Star Atlas, that they're sort of interested in that. So it's like, cool, what can we do that feels specific to our brand? that enhances this thing that is already going on. And so you're like, cool, we can get people involved in that raffle by, by minting them sort of unique badges that have this like cross play with other communities, right? Like, you know, Madlads band or something like that. And then get people engaged in the star Atlas raffle. I, yeah, that, makes a lot of sense to me. I also think it's really cool to sort of start teasing these like, this is somewhat what the experience will be like when the ship is ready type of thing. Yeah, we're really trying to, you know, that'll be like I said, it's in a weird way. It's almost an, an MVP for us, right? In, the world of entertainment, if you will, because we were not building an app or not. We're not building a platform. But you know, at some point getting that, getting a version of that vision out to people that they can, well, Solfate Podcast (40:36.908) I guess tangible isn't the word, you know what mean? They latch onto. can get the appreciation for what you're shooting for. Exactly. Once we can get some kind of gameplay-ish walkthroughs that kind of start to build out a vision for folks that they can grab onto, I think that will be wildly beneficial and will kind of help us move everything forward as far as what we're trying to deliver. 100%. You know, it's interesting to talk about MVP in kind of the entertainment space, but it makes a ton of sense in the same way that if you're building software, you kind of want to get early feedback with the lightest lift possible. You don't just want to spend a year building something and then have it fall flat. You kind of want to start small, get some feedback, iterate on it, get it a little bit bigger. It makes a ton of sense with with entertainment as well. So I'm thrilled to see how that plays out, That sort of racing type thing is probably more my speed, pun intended, when it comes to gaming, right? So it's like, when I think about, you know, where would I personally participate in a Star Atlas type of situation? the kind of entertainment type experiences that you're describing existing in your ship are more of the sorts of things that I would be interested. Let's hang out and play a simple racing game rather than go on like a big mission. And then there's other people that obviously are like, let's go on the big mission. But to your point, maybe between missions, they're like, let's go hang out and do this little thing to chat. So. So like it's, I almost feel like a lot of what you're doing is enabling more. It's like a benefit to star Atlas as well, because it's it enables players who wouldn't otherwise be engaged with it to come in and engage. You know, I'm the first one to say, you know, obviously one of the reasons we chose and, went with star list is, you know, we believe in what they're doing and Solfate Podcast (42:50.616) feel like they're kind of on the forefront of AAA gaming in Web3, doing it right, building the economics, and obviously building on Solana. We feel like that's also, we're trying to pick the best game on the best chain at the right time. And I feel like we're hitting on all cylinders that way. I'm biased, but that's my opinion. Not to say other gaming chains are, there's a lot going on in space, which is great all the way around. it's obviously been very clear. It's helped us. have these conversations, get our brand out there and me personally, being able to use kind of the cloud that Star Atlas has already built up in the ecosystem and the community to kind of help leverage and get our stuff going and out there, we've definitely relied on the support from Star Atlas. But if I'm being honest, I hope to return the favor as we build out and things go further down the road. In the beginning, our user acquisition is going to come from the efforts of Star Atlas. But once we start to achieve what we're going after, I fully believe that we'll be able to repay that in spades, as in being able to create our experiences that draw people who are maybe not even familiar with Star Atlas, but want to experience what we're offering and then just by association, make their way to the game or to the offering. And even something as simple as this very basic iteration with portals, that's very possible because there's a... There's a pretty large community over there of folks who I'm sure love portals and love everything that they do in there. And they'll want to stop in and check out what we're doing. And a few of them will get interested and just by way of association, we'll go check out what Star Atlas is up to and vice versa. As soon as we post anything about being able to have some of that composability, I'm sure a lot of our members who are Star Atlas folk and maybe aren't aware of portals are going to come check it out. So you start to build these connections. Again, we hope to be one of those catalysts that augments what Star Atlas is ultimately doing. Yeah, it seems like it's a very symbiotic relationship where Star Atlas needs to push people to the game and they're doing it in an incredibly interesting way of shipping smaller bits of the game, letting people actually interact with it, vice the typical AAA thing of... Solfate Podcast (45:09.058) we spent five years behind a closed door and here's maybe one or two teaser videos, but you don't get to interact with it really. Star Atlas is doing the other approach and you have you and Super Phoenix Dow on the other side, which is in a way sort of like a marketing arm for Star Atlas in general, where you're both pushing forward in different focus areas, maybe sometimes. So think it's really, really cool. We're getting close to the end of time here, but I wanted to shift the conversation a little bit. to circle back to something you said earlier about the process of actually raising funds from Web2 and Web3 people. And I'm super curious what that actually looked like. So especially on the Web2 side, like on the Web3 side, I'm more used to it. You you're convincing someone of like, hey, here's this game, Web3 game, you can play to earn. These are familiar concepts in the Web3 space. But on the Web2 side, You said you set up an LLC, you took actual investment, ultimately, Super Phoenix Dow purchased this ship for $5 million. What did that process look like in those conversations look like with these people? Sure, absolutely. It takes a much more traditional approach, right? And you could kind of expect so. that really, that I've talked to to kind of raise that initial private equity to kind of kick this whole thing off like we did. Yeah, the vast majority, if I'm being honest, were probably from my personal and business background and network. So obviously having some level of personal connection and trust goes a really long way, but personally, 15 plus years in kind of corporate commercial banking and finance, that's where I come from. So that piece of it was not terribly foreign to me. So that's kind how I was able to put some of the pieces together. But still, convincing folks that we're going to take this real money and we're going to buy not just a virtual digital ship asset, but one that's not even yet created is a bit of a stretch. You're not going to lie. And I had quite a few conversations before some of these started to hit. Funny enough, will say one of the, and this is just anyone who's had to pitch or had to go, you know, do fundraising or whatever. You kind of hone in on what talking points fit best with who you're talking to right after a while. And, and funny enough, one of the things that I found Solfate Podcast (47:34.646) a little ways in is having these conversations with folks, know, probably oftentimes, you know, again, my network, probably, you middle aged folks, have kids, young kids, that kind of stuff, as, as do I. When I finally would get around to the part of trying to do some kind of comparisons, because again, lot of them are not familiar with crypto, they're not really familiar with Web3. But that you can kind of talk through that, you know, from a P and L kind of standpoint, let's say. But the concept of why do people do this? Why do people spend their time and money and effort in this world, in these games, et cetera? And as soon as I would talk to anybody in that spectrum whose children play Roblox, was an instant, they're like, yeah, okay, where do I sign? Because they've all had their kids basically hounding them for, you know, Robux on a regular basis and realize, you know, the connection, the financial connection, right? And the component of. how big this industry really is, how big web two gaming is, how much money, time and effort is spent and pumped into these games and how we're moving into much more virtual experiences. You know, that even just this, right? We're doing zoom now or, you know, over the PC, whatever. And that post pandemic is just where most people function now. And five, six years ago, that was a stretch for a lot of folks, you know, in probably that traditional. you know, office work mode space, whatever. So you start to, these things kind of coalesce and that became a much easier way to present kind of the narrative and the value proposition of the whole idea. Okay. Yeah. That's, yeah, guess we probably should have tried to touch on some of your background, some, which would have shed some that earlier on. Yeah, I mean, I'm actually very curious. Like you said, corporate finance background or corporate banking background. Yeah. Banking finance. What drew you into the Web3 space and I guess Solano specifically, was it was it just Super Team Phoenix or Super Phoenix Dow? You have a lot of conversations with Super Team recently. Or was it was it something else that drew you in or was it predominantly like this this first endeavor? Solfate Podcast (49:51.534) No, so that's a question. I wouldn't say full DGEN, but I've been around for a bit. So again, being, you know, finance banking, et cetera, I, you know, I connected with just crypto blockchain trading early on, early-ish. I was one of the, let's see, was one of the people who didn't get in as soon as I should have. I took a hard look at Bitcoin back in 2012. did all the research, looked at it, said, wow, this makes a lot of sense. This feels right. It makes a lot of blah, And ended up buying some stock or something instead, right? And passed on it for a while. Then came back around as most of us do. There's another cycle. And so about 2016 ish, right? Started getting back in and, oh yeah, what's this about? Check it out. And anyway, and then started my journey like a lot of folks did, right? So went through the whole 2017 bull run was a trading fool, know, ICOs like all about it. And but again, I saw the value there, right? Because much of this is early financialization. mean, I literally not only just in kind of banking and corporate finance, but specifically, I I'm in charge of operations for pretty large bank. So you're talking the actual money movement behind the scenes, you know, the fed wires, the all of the things, all of the things that we're looking to replace. I am extremely familiar with the legacy infrastructure, if you will. So. But having that insider view, can honestly say it's beyond common sense for me to see the value in where this is going. Not necessarily a case in senior leadership yet in my industry, but it'll get there. It'll get there, yeah. Because at some point it's fairly inevitable. But that was kind of my journey, right? So the regular kind of the trading stuff and getting into ICOs and doing those things. then obviously, and then DeFi kind of came around, I think 2020-ish. Again, for me, it was just a huge pivot, right? Unlock, it just made so much sense to be able to start watching some of these projects and these fintechs just coming in and creating these mechanisms for, you know, DeFi, basically. And again, when you work, even you literally work in the world of watching people, helping people transact money, you know, globally, internationally at large scales, at large volumes, and how... Solfate Podcast (52:13.408) unbelievably fee intensive and time intensive it is. Meanwhile, I send James a payment in USDC and it takes about half a second. It's crazy living in both worlds, I guess, at some time. anyway, DPI brought me to NFT. The big blow up in NFT is there around 2021ish. I passed on a board ape when it was like five grand. remember that was that phase. So I started going down the NFT rabbit hole and kind of looking into what that whole implementation was. I'm a huge proponent of at least putting a little bit of money in kind of skin in the game, if you will, because it's how I learned how these things work always. it's been, even if it doesn't work out financially, it's always worked out incredibly well from just an understanding conceptual point of view, right? Of digging in, figuring out the private keys and how to move this money and how to interact with these apps. And so anyway, through all of that, the NFT game basically brought me to Star Atlas. So that's kind of how that whole process or kind of machination worked when they were first putting the white paper out and kind of announcing the game. And then it was this combination of, okay, we've got NFTs. And that was kind of, you know, everyone's doing PFPs back then. And it was just, that's what NFTs were. You could argue maybe there's more depth now to NFTs, but that idea. combined with kind of the underlying economics that they were looking to build, again, build, which resonates pretty well. And then the idea that gaming really being in my opinion, one of those huge onboards or kind of tip of the spear, if you will, you if you're looking for a mainstream audience, that is probably the most likely to be onboarded to crypto in some way, or form. I have to argue gaming has got to be top of the list or near top of the list, right? For a large group of active participants in the world that would be most easily transitioned into what we're building. So you start to kind of put that trifecta together. just seemed like the way to go. And so I got in by investing in Star Atlas and following it and kind of keeping, know, doing my normal market-ish, you know, keeping, keeping, kind of dipping my toes in all the different areas. And then that just rolled and evolved into Solfate Podcast (54:33.358) when they kind of started building out and the ship came available, like I said, and I initially was talking or kind of DMing Michael Wagner probably poof over a year ago now, even though we only came online about six months ago. So the discussions were going back and forth for a while. All of it, how we would do it, what the structure could be, what the options are, pricing, all of that stuff. So that was quite the process, but that's a bit of a combo of kind of my background and and sort of my path through crypto to launching the super Phoenix app. Wow, wildly cool. I always find it interesting having conversations with, I'll say not the typical blockchain degen person. You are not that, you just seem like a normal person. Not that I'm saying that crypto people aren't normal, we're kind of weird. But it shows, like James said earlier, it shows the maturity in the space of You have people that are focusing on the more mature aspects of what blockchain can do period within the global economy or within these experiences that you can provide that are sort of uniquely tailored and uniquely possible with blockchain. It's really cool. It's also incredibly, I think, refreshing to have people in the ecosystem that are thinking about longer term investments. It's not what coin can I buy that will retire me this year? I'm going to sell at the top, I'm going to get out. it involves a squirrel or something, guess. But instead, it's oh, there's this game that's years out that I feel very confident in that I want to participate in creating experiences around investing in those experiences so that we can you know, be bringing more people and serving more people for the next decade, the next two decades. That to me is interesting, right? Like I'm interested in the fact that I like the fact that, you know, when we launched the Super Phoenix Dow governance token, you know, like I will be buying in for, you know, with a 10 year time horizon instead of. Solfate Podcast (56:59.822) instead of like, oh, let's see how this goes in the next four weeks. I'm being honest, there's a challenge yet there, right? Like for us to kind of cut through the noise, which almost feels now like a traditional play, right? I've got like, it's just a DAO token. It's just a governance token. That's that's old news, right? Compared to pump dot fun and everything else that's going on at the moment. So it can be a little, little tricky to kind of cut through the noise. But I feel like it's right. being consistent, pushing through, continuing the messaging, continuing the branding, continuing to deliver, ship, as you guys say. Yeah. Ship the ship. Ship. There you go. You're getting a ship. I like it. I like it. That should be the slogan, ship it. That sounds like a t-shirt. I would wear that t-shirt. t-shirt. I like it. it. I like it. I like it a lot. Before we wrap, I want... I want you to tell the listeners how to get involved with Super Phoenix DAO, what's the quickest entry place, and then any other last-minute show you want to do before we close out. Okay, that's probably most of it, so I appreciate it. Yeah, best place for us is obviously, you know, on X. We're at Super Phoenix DAO altogether. Also website, right? So superphoenixdao.com. You can go check out James and unbox handy work, everything. The entire site, all the interactions. the tabs, the functionality, you name it, it's all them. They've done a phenomenal job. And then on either of those, we've got links to the Discord, is also where we're going to be. A lot of the stuff that's going to be coming up here, like the end of the year, is going to be facilitated through Discord, right? So we want folks to come in, get their badges, check out what we're about, see what's going on, and then hop in, get their role, and just win some stuff, right? So we'll go from there. All right. Cool. Well, thanks, Craig. It's been awesome chatting. I know we've talked about doing this for a while, so I'm glad we finally got you on and could chat a bit about Super Phoenix down now and in the future. I'm excited to see how goes. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it, guys. This is great. Yeah, same. All right. Thank you so much, To the listeners, we'll see you next time. Farewell. Bye-bye. Solfate Podcast (59:21.934) All right, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Sulfate Podcast. I hope you liked it. I know we did. We always have a blast recording with our amazing guests. If you've got a moment, please leave us a review in your podcast app or subscribe on YouTube. And I guess it's time to get some more coffee and get back to work.