Welcome back, this week Anita and Lucas discuss the $258 billion Dogecoin lawsuit facing Elon Musk, how crypto collectible lovers are partying through the pain at the NFT NYC event and how some DAOs are showing the dark side of digital democracy. In their interview this week, Lucas and Anita got the chance to talk with musician and visual artist Latashá. In addition to creating crypto art, Latashá is the Head of Community at NFT startup Zora which recently raised a big round of funding. We talked with her about how the downturn will impact crypto creators and what web3 really has to offer artists.
Welcome back, this week Anita and Lucas discuss the $258 billion Dogecoin lawsuit facing Elon Musk, how crypto collectible lovers are partying through the pain at the NFT NYC event and how some DAOs are showing the dark side of digital democracy.
In their interview this week, Lucas and Anita got the chance to talk with musician and visual artist Latashá. In addition to creating crypto art, Latashá is the Head of Community at NFT startup Zora which recently raised a big round of funding. We talked with her about how the downturn will impact crypto creators and what web3 really has to offer artists.
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Anita Ramaswamy 0:02
Hey everyone, it's an Anita and Lucas. Welcome to chain reaction where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news drama and trends breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious. During the second half of the episode today, we'll be chatting with web three artists Latasha, who runs community at Zora. But before we get to that, let's talk about some news from one of our favorite people in tech to follow Lucas, do you want to see us up for that?
Lucas Matney 0:30
Yes. Okay. So if you've listened this podcast for a while, you know, in web three, there are a fair amount of lawsuits, lawsuits, you know, happen every week, we have another one we can talk about this week, somebody sued Elon Musk for $258 billion. And this person was just a disgruntled Dogecoin investor who probably bet on the currency at the top and has seen all of their money disappear. So they're suing Elon Musk specifically. Yeah. And Tesla and SpaceX saying that they were all essentially a part of a big pyramid scheme to inflate Dogecoin and enrich themselves. That's like, that's, that's what I'm pulling away from.
Anita Ramaswamy 1:08
Wow. So they think Elon was really the one sort of behind all of this and doing some sort of pump and dump situation.
Lucas Matney 1:14
Well, to be fair, I mean, it's in arguable that Elon has had like a hand in an outsized hand in kind of promoting this, you know, he tweets about it. He's like, talked about it on SNL. He's called himself the doge. Father, like, yeah, so if like, someone was gonna think that like someone was secretly running things behind the scenes, they'd have a pretty good argument to make. And that's what this person did. His name is Keith Johnson. He's an American cryptocurrency investor, I couldn't find anything else about him online. But he like, you know, laid out point by point, all of the things Elon has done for Doge didn't necessarily read for me as a good legal argument. But in terms of conspiracy theories, it wasn't bad.
Anita Ramaswamy 1:54
So it's a class action lawsuit. Right? It's not just Keith, at this point. Have other people signed on? Or I don't
Lucas Matney 1:58
really know how to read legal docs that well, in order to determine that, but it doesn't seem like I mean, a lot of people were calling it a law suit and lol suit. Just like, yeah, I love that dude. Just because there's like nothing. I don't know, it seems doomed from the start. But yes, He wants everyone else to get in on it. And to be clear, the $258 billion number is triple the amount of money that has come out of Dogecoin from its all time high to where it currently sits. So it was at 74 cents. Now a Dogecoin trades at five cents. And I guess doing the math was like 80,
Anita Ramaswamy 2:35
based on market cap, like 250 billion is three times the amount that was lost,
Lucas Matney 2:39
right? $86 billion has been lost from Dogecoin. From its top to its current spot. So
Anita Ramaswamy 2:46
okay, actually swinging for the fences here, Keith.
Lucas Matney 2:49
I know, yeah, keeps going for it. But so you know, he filed this lawsuit, and then kind of unclear if it was related, or if it was just bad press Dogecoin was trading at five cents, which is where it was basically before its entire, like run took off. But Elon tweeted out something for a supporter saying I will keep supporting Dogecoin. And then yeah, exactly. He's the he's sticking by his people. And then in an interview with Bloomberg says, I just know a lot of people who are not that wealthy who, you know, have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin I'm responding to those people. I don't know what
Anita Ramaswamy 3:22
Sony said in response to the lawsuit. Right? Well,
Lucas Matney 3:24
it was in response to a question with his Bloomberg thing, which I think was probably Yeah, this lawsuit as dumb as it was got a lot of people paying attention to it, because it was such a huge number.
Anita Ramaswamy 3:34
Yeah, so many people probably lost money on DOS. Yes.
Lucas Matney 3:40
Well, moving on from that quickly became something else. A lot of people probably lost money on NF T's and they all descended upon where you live this week. Yeah. So
Anita Ramaswamy 3:50
it's the NFT NYC conference right now, like biggest NFT event of the year, and I am in New York with the unique pleasure of being able to attend. And it's been really interesting, ya know, I mean, I'm still getting over like a cold that I got at the last crypto conference. So God helped me but no. So what's interesting about NF T's right now, like I was noticing that the vibe at this conference was just so positive, even more so maybe than at consensus, which I went to a couple of weeks ago. And I think it just got me thinking about how the NFT market I mean, yes, we're in a crypto downturn, all crypto companies, including NFT, companies are sort of down and they're struggling, but the NFT market at the end of the day doesn't always move exactly in tandem with cryptocurrency. Right. And I think there is some heightened positivity to the NFT market. I took a look at trading volumes for the past couple of months. And I saw that trading volumes are down overall for NF T's but what's interesting is they dropped sharply the first week of May right sort of when we started this whole downturn situation then they recovered throughout May and they went to another peak at the end of May and then throughout June they've been dropping steadily again. Whereas if you look at Bitcoin and Aetherium like since May they've overall generally speaking Pretty much just gone downhill. So I thought it was kind of interesting that like NF T's sort of spiked and then went down. Like there's a little more volatility, but it also seems a little more stickiness, right.
Lucas Matney 5:08
Yeah, I mean, not to disagree with your read too much. But I also feel like there's nothing like misery to promote friendship. And I feel like this is an FTM YC must feel like a big group therapy session for all these once had been millionaires or millionaire hopefuls kind of seeing all of their money evaporate, because I mean, even if they're doing well, in denominations of Aetherium, like Aetherium has dropped significantly over the past, like 10 days, basically.
Anita Ramaswamy 5:33
Yeah. And they're definitely still linked. And I thought it was funny that it seems like no one wants to say the word downturn. You know, there are some events that I attended. And you know, I think the word cycle was used a lot. But no one ever said the actual word that starts with the D. And I was kind of waiting for it. And I didn't hear it. So I thought that was pretty interesting.
Lucas Matney 5:50
It's funny. I mean, you like we're both following hundreds of crypto people on Twitter. And just like seeing the people who are like, this is a supercycle, we may never have a crypto winter, again, who have just turned into the biggest bears who are just like everything, you know, bitcoins going to $2,000 We're all going to be you know, stay. Yeah, I feel like the big meme has been everyone like posting their McDonald's applications or something. Oh, yeah, a little tasteless, but it is what it is. But yes, yeah, I think that there's a lot of doom and gloom in the market still. But we talked about this a little bit. If you own a really expensive NFT, you can't sell part of it, you have to sell the whole thing. So you have to either like things have to be going badly enough that you have to decide that you just wanted like divest from like this NFT group or like NFT project versus you know, if you have $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a tough market, you can decide to sell like 3000 or something like that, but it's kind of a little bit more all or nothing with people's involvement. So as a turn, they feel more like conviction, perhaps.
Anita Ramaswamy 6:51
Yeah, I think that that's kind of what's going on here. And I mean, please forgive me for using the word I'm about to use, which is community but I do feel that you know, people in the NFP space like, I know, I know, it's bad. I shouldn't say that. But it's so overused in crypto, but with NF T's genuinely, I do think that there is some sense of community and emotional attachment to what you're holding beyond just like holding Bitcoin or holding eath. So maybe there's a little bit more resistance to sell. I mean, like we talked about these NFT companies are still struggling for sure, but it seems a little less bad than it is in the overall crypto markets. And there's a big company there's a big fundraise from a startup magic Eden this past week, which raised at a $1.6 billion valuation. They are like the marketplace for Solana backed NF Ts and even though open sea is the largest NFT marketplace overall. Magic Eden does so much more volume on Solana nfts than open seat as In fact, I think Lucas, you mentioned that open seat did less than 10% of what magic Eden's volume was in Solana NFT, specifically in the past month.
Lucas Matney 7:53
Yeah, I mean, so Ethereum NF T's there's expensive demand, they're expensive gas fees are expensive Solana that's just like less so the case. People don't like Solana for other reasons. But people like it because the gas fees are incredibly cheap. So as a result, that's like a lower barrier of entry generally to get involved with NFT communities there than it is with eath.
Anita Ramaswamy 8:12
Yeah, and it's interesting that we're seeing activity still in that space, despite the downturn. I mean, it's not just the magic, eat and fundraise. uniswap, the big defi exchange announced this week that they were gonna buy an NFT aggregator called Genie, which is also a pretty big move in that industry.
Lucas Matney 8:27
There's something really interesting about the NFT community that always intrigues me, but I think it's like crypto in general is basically the community gets stronger. As like, it becomes more controversial in some capacity. It feels like like people people get more devoted to it, but it feels like that's like doubly true with NF T's like I think people kind of like roll their eyes that like Bitcoin and stuff like that. But like a lot of people genuinely hate NF T's for a lot of reasons that I think they're a little bit easier to understand maybe so people are just kind of like be like, I can like see a bunch of pictures of monkeys and Google Images. Like why is one of these worth $200,000 and like people who are NFT wealthy are probably the most annoying, just from a pure looking at personality versus capitalism. Well, not even them personally. But just like seeing like, Oh, so you bought these pictures? And now you're super rich. Yeah, it's it can be annoying to people, but I think like as a result of it being the most controversial, it also might kind of have the most tight knit group that might have a better chance of kind of staying together throughout a bear market.
Anita Ramaswamy 9:32
Yeah, one other thing I noticed at a lot of these NFT NYC events is that there's a lot of celebrities and also just sort of I mean, not like a list celebrities necessarily. I'm talking sort of like those mid level like influencers people who are sort of famous and they have all been at this event I've seen so many tweets from like friends of mine who are saying like, Oh, you know, my, my girlfriends were like models and don't have any involvement in crypto or like invited to these NFT NYC parties, but I do think that's kind of different. Like you didn't really see as much of that with Like eath Denver consensus, and part of it sure is maybe the city and the location, but I think part of it is like a quirk of the NFT community as well.
Lucas Matney 10:07
My favorite thing I saw on Twitter. So a startup hired a Snoop Dogg impersonator to be at their event. And they he couldn't legally say that he was Snoop Dogg. So his name tag said dupes. Nog.
Anita Ramaswamy 10:21
Yeah, did people fall for it?
Lucas Matney 10:22
This person the tweet was from like a I think it was like a media reporter at NBC or something. It was like a Yeah, I tried to like talk to this person's handler to see if I could get an interview with Snoop Dogg and the handler was like, we can't this isn't Snoop Dogg. This is a look like,
Anita Ramaswamy 10:37
okay, that's wild. That's why I love
Lucas Matney 10:39
that. Keep NF t and f t. NYC?
Anita Ramaswamy 10:43
Exactly.
Lucas Matney 10:47
Yeah, on that note, a lot of things changed. When there's a downturn, you take a lot of the irrational exuberance out of the market. And you also take a lot of the idealism out. So like, over the past couple years, past few months, especially everybody's been talking about Dows. And they're these decentralized groups that basically work together and make decisions. They vote with cryptocurrency governance tokens. They make proposals. It's very like a new form of bureaucracy. But one which proponents say can be a more healthy ecosystem or something.
Anita Ramaswamy 11:17
Yeah, and more transparent because all the votes are recorded on the blockchain. So that's sort of the premise there.
Lucas Matney 11:21
Yes, the transparencies of the big special sauce, but as things kind of get more desperate, and as people see themselves getting a lot less wealthy, it turns out that people collectively making decisions don't always make the best decisions. There are a couple of a couple things that happened this week, specifically, past couple of weeks.
Anita Ramaswamy 11:40
Yeah, it can be super difficult. I mean, it's some of the challenges that we see with like big democracies, too, right. Like, even politically, I'm thinking of like India and their voting process and how complex it is, but back to Dows. So there's a style called merit circle, they are worth around $370 million. And they basically formed to loan NF T's to people who play play to earn crypto games, but they can't afford the initial buy in. So you'd go to the merit circle, Dow, you get a loan, and then you're able to have that upfront capital to start playing doesn't really matter what they do. The point of what I'm trying to say is that one of their users, or one of the members of the merit circle, Dao, who goes by the pseudonym honey barrel, posted that the sow had taken investment from a number of different investors. And one of those investors is called yield guild games, why GG yield guild is not actually a VC firm. It's another Dow, which is kind of interesting, when you have one Dow investing in another like that shit happens all the time these days. And so merit circle members like honey barrel, or I was gonna say, Honey Badger honey barrel, basically started getting worried that investors specifically why GG, we're going to sell out of their position during the downturn, because why GG would have still made a ton of money on their position, even if they exited now. So honey barrel was like, okay, look, guys, like we need investors who are here for the long term, who are going to stick with our Dow. And they started questioning and sowing dissent about whether Y GG is really committed to the long term growth of the Dow. So the outcome of that was merit circle, the Dow ended up voting to kick out why GG as an investor, they literally just ousted them bought out their stake at a 10x premium from their own treasury, they made that decision. And I mean, it was it was really controversial, because it was overturned. And then, you know, they kind of went back on that, and then finally decided that they actually are going to kick this entity out.
Lucas Matney 13:21
So the teknicks premium is what why GG could have gotten had they sold their stake, they just bought them out at face value of the dollar amount they put into the Dow. So they're basically like, let's pretend this investment never happened, and that we never used this money in any capacity, which like, it's it's controversial enough to take VC money amongst Dows. And like, that's been a big conversation over the past couple of years. But to pretend to try to have it both ways. Is it just like, clearly, I don't know, this is like everyone looked at this was like, What the heck are you guys doing? And I think why GG put out a statement basically being like, we don't understand what's going on here. And like, this isn't like legally binding.
Anita Ramaswamy 14:00
Right. And it's weird. I mean, look, if I were a venture investor, or any sort of institutional investor in a Dow, I would be shitting. myself right now, because there are like, really no protections? And I mean, yeah, like maybe what the DAO did, it's not like legally binding. But who knows, right? If you can just sort of get kicked out based on majority vote? I mean, there's a lot of complexities that come with that. Oh, well, yeah.
Lucas Matney 14:20
And that's the thing. That's what's leading to a lot of these problems. It's not even majority vote. A lot of these places have quorum of like, 1% of the governance token, right. So basically, if you have a minor whale user who has like, a single digit percentage and you like force through a vote in a 12 hour period or something, chances are a lot of people aren't gonna check their emails, chances are like, you can just push through whatever you want. And I think that that's led to a couple of these situations where like, yeah, if they like had longer proposal time periods, but also you know, if there's a quick fix they need to make they can't really afford to have longer proposal timelines. You have to rush some of this stuff that the challenges of governance what exactly like this is where the button Have a little dictator recipe probably would work a little bit better for running this stuff. Yeah, stuffs gonna get very wild, which is
Anita Ramaswamy 15:07
how a lot of traditional companies are run. And actually speaking of Wales, there was one other shit show that went on in the Dell World that I want to quickly just recap for you all is that so land, it's a crypto lending platform, there was a whale user on their platform that basically was accounting for more than 95% of deposits, which is super risky, right? Like if that guy, you know that that person pulls out of the platform, then you have a huge liquidity problem. So the Dow that govern Solenn, held a governance vote agreed initially, that they're going to kick this whale out and just kick them off the platform completely. And then the Dow voted to overturn that original decision, because some users were saying like, it's not right for this protocol to take over a user account, even if it's to mitigate risk.
Lucas Matney 15:47
Yeah, they're witnessing a problem that has been happening with a bunch of other things, which is like there are big players who are over leveraged and are potential liquidation risks where like they've borrowed money in order to double down on a currency. And so like, you know, if you look at Celsius, are you looking at three arrows capital, like those are examples of firms that have very wide reaching implications of them potentially facing insolvency? So in this circumstance, they had this one user who made up this big portion of the pool. And yeah, they were just like, well, you're making bad decisions that are going to negatively affect the entire protocol, we're just going to take over your account through a smart contract, upgrade, and make it so that it isn't a negative thing for the group. And everyone was just like looking at this and very critical from a
Anita Ramaswamy 16:30
the members didn't think that was decentralized because it was a decision made by a couple of members initially and down members kind of came in and they were like, This is not happening. You're not taking over the user account.
Lucas Matney 16:39
And it was funny because this is a complaint Solon does on the Solana ecosystem. And like a lot of people kind of dump on Solana because they see it as less decentralized than Aetherium. Because of just like their underlying infrastructure. It was like it was looking like I follow this Ilana founder on Twitter, and he was basically like, Solana is not so lens. These are different things. Like everyone was using this as a way to like, talk about how awful Solana was, and he's like, I mean, whatever. Some of your complaints are different, but like these aren't, leave me alone. Yeah, exactly. Which I'm sure yeah, leave me alone is probably something that
Anita Ramaswamy 17:13
honestly, but no, this, this all sort of brings me back to thinking about something that Aaron Levie actually said on our last episode, the CEO of box, and he was talking about, Is it really good to have a bunch of people making these decentralized decisions on kind of relatively routine day to day issues? Right? I think the example Aaron gave was like, imagine everyone voted on where a certain button was placed on the next iPhone, or like, what features that would have like, we would all disagree on what exactly we want to see out of that, which is part of why Dows are just struggling so much to get anything done. You know, they really do want to maintain that ethos of decentralization and Dows have made it tough for venture backers to get involved. Like when Andreessen Horowitz invested in Friends with Benefits A little while back, I remember the Dow told Andreessen, like you guys have to give half of your votes to other Dow members, because they didn't want that VC influence. So on one hand, that sounds really good in theory, but on the other hand, it's really difficult to make decisions that way.
Lucas Matney 18:04
Yes, I think that we're in like the obviously there have been Dows before. But we're in a very much a founding era of experimentation. And I think that fundamentally, with most forms of experimental governance, you start more open, and then you kind of dial in, in terms of exactly how specific you want the decisions that are made democratically to be. So like, here, they're allowing these dials to make decisions on everything. I think down the road, you're probably going to have more startup hierarchies inside the Dow's that kind of have a little bit more free rein, they have to be transparent about the budgets, you vote on tax cuts are looking like companies basically. Right? Exactly, exactly. Like let's make these look a little bit more like classical shareholders making these bets. I think that the way they're operating now, where a Rando user can make a very tactical choice that can have potentially destructive implications. It's just Yeah, it's it's not gonna turn out well,
Anita Ramaswamy 18:55
yeah, to be clear, I don't know that I'm advocating for centralization, just kind of pointing out some of the issues with decentralization. So watch this space, my views might evolve. But I feel right now.
Lucas Matney 19:06
It's hard to have one way or the other feelings about a lot of this stuff, because you see so many examples of where it doesn't doesn't work. So you got to Yeah, you always have to stay open minded, which is what we what we strive for. Yeah, hopefully.
Anita Ramaswamy 19:22
This week, we chatted with Latasha, an independent musical and visual artists known for using nfts to monetize her work. She also educates other artists about web three through her role as head of community at NFT platform Sora. Hey, Latasha, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks, guys. How you guys doing? Doing well? We're doing awesome. Getting ready for NFT NYC so
Latashá 19:46
yeah, I know. It's already chaos, but I'm super excited.
Anita Ramaswamy 19:51
Yeah, so let's dive into it. I mean, so you made it big in the NFT world. You mentioned your first token of the music video that you made, and I read about this one One of saurez co founders ended up buying it for around $1,000. And I'm just curious, like, what were the costs like back then to do something like that?
Latashá 20:06
Yeah, back then the costs were way cheaper because it was when we first started. So we were looking at gas fees around, I want to say $25. When was this? This was in February of 2021. So it was like to watch how things have progressed is insanity to me until watch how the gas fees go up and down is crazy. But yeah, when we first started, it was about $25 To make your pieces and now we're watching things from 100 to
Anita Ramaswamy 20:35
you know, yeah. And I guess just sort of in that same vein, how would you sort of convince an artist who was kind of skeptical about the high cost of minting and NFT, to get into the space,
Latashá 20:44
there are so many different avenues that artists take with this. And I think I often tell them that it's just like putting things up on an art gallery. Also, I remind them, especially in the music industry, that the cost of even entry within the music industry is so expensive. I mean, to get your songs onto playlists, to get your songs onto the radio, you're usually going to have to pay some amounts that are just absurd from like, $10,000 up. So I'm like, would you rather pay $10,000 to a radio station? Would you rather like pay like 50 to $100 on chain and watch this thing grow, especially in this new fertile soil right now. I feel like there's so many opportunities within Web three. And I'm always reminding artists you want to get in when it's at the beginnings, because right now is when people are watching, and you'll be the first to do it.
Lucas Matney 21:35
I mean, that's interesting, because you got involved, obviously, with NF T's at a time where this wasn't something that everybody was doing. And you know, I know, I know, kind of one of the things people say about NF T is like, reputations are built in bear cycles, and the money's made in the bull market. So there's been a bunch of artists that have gotten involved in the past year or two, you know, we're kind of looking at fairly turbulent times right now, in the broader crypto markets. What advice do you have for people who maybe they just started their first NF T's? And now they're like, oh, great, a theory and prices are crashing, less people are interested, what do I do?
Latashá 22:04
Right? I think this is the perfect time, like you said, to start creating, and really thinking through your ideas. A lot of the artists that I witnessed coming through the bear market were so excited because they were making these pieces of income that they've never made before. And now they're definitely like, Okay, what's going on? Why is it not the same. And I always try to remind them that this is just like any other industry, we're going to have to deal with waves. And just the transformation of ebbs and flows is something you have to be ready for. But I would rather be in this ebb and flow. Because we've witnessed how things have changed with Bitcoin and other coins in the past. And it's really beautiful to witness that for us, too. So I often tell artists to just think about creating and think about the culture of what you're creating right now, this is the perfect time to really get deep into what you want to see into the space. I also witnessed, you know, a lot of people coming into the space without that mindset of like, what do I really want to channel within this world that we're building here? And now they're like, Okay, now is the time to start thinking about that. So I really am excited for those artists that are coming in like that, over
Lucas Matney 23:14
the past few months, obviously, like NFT volumes have been like billions of dollars every month, there have been a lot of visual artists, recording artists who have been making a living off of this and making more money than they ever thought they would. But I guess as volumes go down, are you concerned that people are just going to kind of shift back to traditional platforms just because they have to because the money isn't necessarily coming in?
Latashá 23:36
No, I'm not too concerned about that, I think what will happen is the people who want to stay here will stay. And the people who were just trying it out, we'll figure out other means or come back. I think it's all about just your intention in the space. I often tell artists be in every market, don't just feel like you have to be web free. Don't just feel like you have to be web to try it all. Because it's better to have multiple streams of income and multiple avenues where your communities are than just one space. And you know, we've seen the hurdles of our past web two worlds. I won't say any names of the hurdles. But I've seen a lot of hurdles from there. And we're gonna see a few here too. And we have to be ready for that. It's really important for artists to be flexible and not forcing anyone to be flexible. But I think it is really important to like be flexible, especially in the world that we're in right now. Because things are going to always fluctuate and we're witnessing that beyond just entertainment markets. We're watching that and just our lives in general. So yeah, so
Anita Ramaswamy 24:36
when it comes to like, I guess traditional like web two kind of artists who are maybe dropping their music on Spotify or SoundCloud versus web three Native artists like yourself, what sort of additional marketing and promotion is involved when you are like a web three Native artists like is your audience sort of different? Are you doing different things to promote your work?
Latashá 24:54
The audience is definitely different. The audience has definitely transformed into a world that I think as a really different mindset on money, I would say and mindset on offering and sharing and doing all those aspects and abundance, but I think I do pretty much the same things that I've was doing from the past, pushing it on Twitter, pushing it on Instagram, I'm not a big tick tock person. So forgive me. I do push on every other market. And I think the only big differences is that we're showing often like how auctions are going, and things of that nature. I like to share that with my audience so that they get excited to witness this transformation happened for content. So many of the artists are like, whoa, you just made $50,000 off of a music video. That's insanity. And I'm like, Yeah, but that's what it should have always been to me. I think our music and our art always should have been taken care of in that same realm. And you know, music video for a long time never got any kind of payback for it. And so now it's of have a world where that is happening is what it should be to meet. And so on my height for that, too.
Anita Ramaswamy 26:02
Yeah, yeah. And that all makes sense. And I guess, you know, even outside of just NF T's like we've talked a lot about NF T's and what the value is for artists who are creating them. But I think crypto and web three has been pitched a lot, particularly to communities who have been historically excluded from the financial system as like a way to build wealth and a way out of their situation. And it's just something I've been thinking about a lot like now that we're seeing this huge downturn in prices, do you think that maybe there was a little too much eagerness from the crypto community to like, recommend investing in these products that do carry a lot of risk,
Latashá 26:30
I think there was eagerness and getting a lot of people in at the same time, I think that was probably the part that we needed to think over before, because we needed to prepare the people for when there was an ebb and flow. And I wish you know, more markets did that and just educated more. And that's why I built Zor topia, which we'll probably talk about later. But the whole purpose of Zootopia was to really educate folks on the human to human level about crypto and why these ebbs and flows happen and really show out for the peeps that you know, at really necessarily in that mindset all the time, and to remind them how these things work. And so we'll talk about Zootopia. But I just wanted to say we will we will. big reason why because we want to get people prepared for what this is going to become and the futures are holed into it. I
Lucas Matney 27:22
think, you know, there's this kind of broader question about does web three matter? Like what is even web three, and a lot of people who are skeptics, I think, can probably understand why it's good for creators, but might be a little bit more critical on what it means for consumers. So I think that that's also maybe part of the question there with like, onboarding all these consumers at the same time. Like what's what's in it for them? In terms of kind of jumping into this big speculative frenzy? Well, I
Latashá 27:47
think there's so many aspects for the consumer that people don't even think about one. My favorite aspect, obviously, because I love community is becoming a part of a community that might be about something, for example, you know, we have like her story, dowels. And we have unicorn dowels. And we have all these different communities that are growing from the web three space, and they are actually taking hold on like activists work and changing the movements in the world and things of that nature. And I love watching that happen. And then consumers come into that because they have never found avenues for those actions, right. And now they're finding action with it. And crypto. The other part of this is obviously new forms of income for these consumers. I watch people like sell my pieces and be so hurt that they sold them, but also feel like wow, I just got some really big income out of selling a Latasha piece right now. And that's something that we didn't have in the music industry. It's often like a gift. But we don't see like this energy exchange happening. And now we're witnessing that with the consumer and the artists. And I think that's super exciting. I think it's something that I've always wanted to I was like, How can I give my consumer something even more than just the music. And now with crypto, we're witnessing that. And I like to also think that this is like vinyl, you're owning a piece of history right now. Yeah. So you know, you want to own that piece of history. And so I always remind people of that, like, imagine if you know, Heno or eemaan Europe are the next Michael Jackson and you're owning the next Michael Jackson's vinyl piece right now, you know, and that is what I believe NF T's are gonna become I'm really excited for this whole walk we're seeing especially with NF T's and fashion and how they correlate, and I'm thinking about like the sneaker heads and people in that world to like collect sneakers, and it's kind of the same avenues are witnessing within NF T's and Bobby hundreds talks about that a lot. But I always go back to those ideas. It's just a new trade that I think we should all get into because digital work is work at the root of it. And we should definitely see it as that.
Anita Ramaswamy 29:51
So I do want to talk about Surah topia, can you tell us a little bit about that? I know it's not the first time that you're hosting this and you've done this before. So what's that all
Latashá 29:59
about? Yeah, so Autopia started out back in September when I first started as community lead at Zuora. And now I'm Head of Community, which is such a beautiful thing. I wanted to find a way to educate folk on just web three and get them all in one room, because I was getting so many DMS and emails about NF T's and web three, and what is it? And so I said, we should just do a webinar. And so we started these webinars out back in September, and they're every other Wednesday where I just onboard folks, I onboard about 50 to 100 artists, every webinar, and we first get them their wallets, we talk about what web three is show them how to mint. And then we get into the deeper intricacies of this thing about like mindsets, and how to get prepared for all the ebbs and flows of this, about marketing about community building all of that. So it started out as that. And then these communities started to like build their own squads, and they started to make group chats, and was like, hey, we want to hang out with each other. And so we started Zora topia after NSE, and YC. Because we saw also there was a lack of representation for bipoc folk and LGBTQI plus folk and we were like, Okay, we need to create safe spaces for us. And Zora topia felt like the safest to the T space for us at the time, and I loved watching it grow. So we did one at New York for NFT and YC, 2021. And that was beautiful. And then we did Zootopia, at South by Southwest. And we also did Art Basel. And so now we have one coming up at an FCN YC. For this year, it's huge. It's going to be over 3000 people attending, which I'm so excited for it encompasses panels, branches, we also have our exhibitions within it from cyber bots. And for the TL. And the Void is also a part of that. And then we have some amazing performers from the web three space like Toki, monsta, Mick Jenkins, myself, pen, OMA rufen, eemaan, Europe and a ton of other people. So I'm really high, I think there's gonna be the experience of experiences for web three, I'm pushing it for that. And I also really believe that it's going to become something beyond that for the future. I really think that this could be like our web three, Coachella,
Lucas Matney 32:08
I've been looking at, like some of the events happening. And there's like, clearly a ton. I'm also just curious, like, what are the vibes going into NFT NYC like some of these other events you noted like, are a little bit happier times for Aetherium prices and stuff like this, like a lot of the people who are going to this are kind of like smiling through the tears a little bit, it seems like its prices down 30 or 40% in the past week, like it's obviously a problem for people who have like amassed wealth over the past year, like, what are the vibes going into this conference,
Latashá 32:36
he's like, ironically, I was hanging out yesterday with Betty NFT, who runs dead fellows. And we were having this conversation about what the vibes are going to be. And I think we all stand that the vibes are going to be amazing, just because the people who are going to be there really want to be there, if you are only encompassed in the money aspect of this, I feel for you.
Anita Ramaswamy 33:00
But yeah,
Latashá 33:01
it might be a tough time. But I also always want to remind people that this is community built. And so you have to show up with the community and be there. So the more we watch communities coming together, a lot of times we watch a theory of go up. And so I'm really excited to see an FCN YC be an aspect of why a theory and possibly goes up every time we've had NFC and YC. Also, we realized that there's a deeper reason for this. And Zora topia as well, we realized that there's like a deeper connection that people are finding with these events, and safety and security and finding like families and home like new homes for them and avenues for them to like be their fullest selves. And that's what I'm the most excited about. And I think that's what a lot of other people are excited about, too.
Lucas Matney 33:48
I'm curious, you know, having a conversation with the founder of dead fellows, there's in my mind, they're these all these different NFT groups talking about community. And I think about like, what type of community is a person who's buying into profile pic project expecting versus one who's like buying into an individual artist? And I guess like, in my mind, and I don't know if this is fair, but like people buying into PFPs I think are like probably more speculatively motivated, I guess, comparatively. But I guess in my mind, like, there might be some challenges up ahead if volumes are down and like people are like, Well, why am I involved in this specific project? If not for the money, but like, do you feel like that's the same case for one of one artists or artists like yourself doing drops? I think people are gonna be speculative. It's crypto, crypto, after all.
Latashá 34:33
Worlds written, but I think it's all about what your intentions are and what you believe in for the projects that you get into, right. We were talking yesterday also about how like, we collect projects that we don't think ever is gonna make a lot of money, but we actually believe in it, and that's from PSP to individual projects, or we hold on to them and then before we know it, they actually make a lot of money that we did not expect it to make. I have a few projects that were like that for me. And so I won't say MPSP projects or individual projects have like different belief systems, I think it's all about like the individual that is getting into the projects themselves, and what they decide these projects are going to be for them. I know for dead fellows, for example, they have like a beautiful culture and community growing out of the worlds that they're in. And the people actually care about the art. And so I'm really excited to see them do their thing. And then for door, topia, which all the artists are pretty much individual artists, but we're supporting them through Zootopia. A lot of these artists are receiving so many benefits out of being in the crypto space and support that they've never seen before. So it's really just what your intention is back to that. And I think what the consumer decides these projects are going to be for them.
Anita Ramaswamy 35:41
Yeah. So we've talked a lot about a community. And I've been thinking about this, too, with some of the recent headlines this week. I mean, and I've seen, you've talked about this in interviews, too, about it just being such a challenge that the industry right now is still so white and male, frankly, and like there's still a lot of you know, we're still dealing with the same societal issues in web three that we deal with outside of that. And I read the story about Kraken, the crypto exchange this week, with the CEO making some really bigoted comments, frankly, and Coinbase CEO sort of chiming in to support that. And I guess, in your view, as you know, a woman of color building and web three, what do you think it's going to take to push back against this is representation sort of what we're looking for? Is it going to take a little bit more pushback than that, I think
Latashá 36:19
it's going to take more folks that don't look like white crypto bros to be at the table companies. And that's why I'm very grateful to be working at Zuora. Because I think that I allow for a voice that isn't always at the table. And I think the more we allow diversity within the heads of these companies, the more we'll see change happen. It's really unfortunate to witness this happening. Because I truly believe innately that web three and NF T's are for the disruption of those systems and models, I really do see that they have done some wonders for bipoc and LGBTQI. Plus communities and marginalized communities as a whole has felt like their lives are changing through this space, and to have, you know, the systems that these they'll be the systems that be hurt, yeah. But I really do believe that we're going to find change once we bring more people to the forefront of this thing that don't look the same. And so I always push for that. And I always believe that these artists that like continue to resist continue to say what needs to be said are going to change the world because of it.
Lucas Matney 37:23
You know, I think on the topic of representation, that's a big thing here, one of the things I'm curious is there's this idea of decentralization and getting a lot of different voices involved with these projects. But if you look at some of these protocols that are like based around, you know, people with governance tokens voting, it's still the power is very concentrated. So I guess if you look like, you know, if you look at like something like that situation with ens domains, like a few months ago, ultimately, it didn't necessarily matter how much community backlash there was because the people who held the governance tokens kind of had a vested interest in whatever that one guy was saying, like, kind of continuing to hold on. Right. And that was, like, you know, about his bad is mind blowing. If that's not, you know, and everyone was just like, are we gonna cancel people on web three now, like, but you know, I guess that's like, kind of part of a broader question, which is that do people who are just getting involved actually have power in these communities? Or is it still kind of being stuck with the investor class and like, the founder class?
Latashá 38:20
Wow, I can't really say what's happening. But I can say that I think it's about what the community is about, right. And when I witnessed different communities, I think different communities have different governance, right, and like, the way they do things is very different. So we kind of look at that aspect. But for the communities that I'm a part of, I know that the people always come first. And that is what's the most important to me. And I can't say too much for ens. That was a tough moment for everyone. Because we were all like, this is the backing of web three. But we would hope that the governance behind it would see that they need to change things and to do better. But you know, like we said, this is the systems that we're in right now. And we just got to keep doing the work.
Anita Ramaswamy 39:09
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's tough, right? It's it's so much like so many other industries that we see. And it's like the same problems reflected. So
Latashá 39:16
yeah, I mean, we've seen all kinds of things in this space, but we have all kinds of things. I can't even go into all the things that I've seen, but I know that I've also seen a lot of good in the space and a lot of great change happened for so many and through legs origins or topia have witnessed, like culture have like a rise again and feel like they have a home. And so I'm excited because I know that that means in the next five years, we're going to see some really amazing things happen for culture and the communities that are within it.
Anita Ramaswamy 39:48
Yeah, and I guess on that note for artists themselves, you know, who are maybe just getting into web three for the first time you know, if you're an artist and maybe you sell some NF T's you see a lot of success you bring in a lot of you have a bunch of wealth and it's Ethereum right now, you know, what's your view on sort of turning that into actual money and building something for the long term without being sort of at the whims of the volatility of crypto? Well, I
Latashá 40:09
always say, decide what you want to do with your money, right? If you want to keep your money in crypto go for it. But I would also say like, again, be a multiple streams of income, always decide if you want to take some of your crypto and put it into different forms of art or, you know, get a marketing team for your music or do other things that can build income in different ways. I think that's really important. I don't think we should ever be cuffed to any I've been, should always be free and as open as possible. And I always tell artists before getting into the space to like, just get their mindsets ready for abundance, and like what that looks like for them. Because when you see the ebbs and flows, sometimes that could create a lot of mental challenges for a lot of creators. And I'm just hoping that a lot of them, like take therapy, get into the spiritual work of money, all of those aspects, because that will help them in this walk, and help them decide where to put their money and to believe in their intuition to on like, what the money is going to do for them and what they want to see happen with their monies. Intention is key. And crypto to me. Like it's all about intention always. But especially in web three. So yeah, yeah.
Anita Ramaswamy 41:22
So last question for you. Who are some of the artists or projects that you're really excited about right now? And Web3? That's such a hard question. Like a couple. I know, I'm sure there's a ton. They're gonna all be
Latashá 41:33
mad if I missed them. I love so many. I mean, of course, I'm excited for Zurich, because that's the home base. And Dora has been building some really beautiful tools for the people like the new API is insane where you can like get any NFT wants, you know, we just got addition. So you can like make your own NFC collection with like three clicks, which is insane. Because a couple of months ago, that was not a thing for a lot of these collections. And then I'm excited for a lot of the musicians coming up. Obviously I love like eemaan Europe, kind of a roof. Leak mall who's done amazing things within the space is killing it. And I'm hyped for film, I think film is going to take a huge like leap after the bear market. With a lot of like creative, I think film is going to be the next frontier. And I'm excited for artists like Jamal Reynolds, Terence Young, who brought a web series into this space. There's a lot of crazy things happening within this space that I don't think everybody's seeing because so many people are focused on the apes and up to date, more things. So, yeah, I'm hyped for it for everything that's really about the culture, and really about forwarding the movement so that more people of all worlds are in the front. So yeah, that's
Lucas Matney 42:48
well, yeah, I mean, there's certainly a ton going on. It sounds like there's gonna be a big party happening at NFT. NYC. So topia, yes. Well, I just want to you know, this great conversation. Just want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and yeah, have a great or a topia party.
Latashá 43:04
Thank you. Like a holiday. Thank you so much.
Anita Ramaswamy 43:07
Hopefully, I'll see you there. See you soon. Take care, y'all.
Lucas Matney 43:13
Thanks for listening. We'll be back every week with the top crypto news and interviews with experts in the space. You can catch us on Spotify, Apple Music or your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to our companion newsletter also called Chain reaction@techcrunch.com. Forward slash newsletters. Check out the links in our show notes for some of TechCrunch is crypto coverage this week, and you can follow us on at Chang underscore reaction on Twitter. We'll see you next week. Chain Reaction is hosted by myself. Lucas Matney along with my co host and Anita Ramaswamy. We are produced by Yashad Kulkarni and our associate producer is Maggie Stamets with editing by Cal Keller Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator Alyssa stringer leads audience development and Henry pic of it manages TechCrunch his audio products thanks for listening