Chief Brand Officer of Dapper Labs talks about the state of NFT and blockchain gaming, its opportunities and challenges

Tony Tao, founding partner of NCC Ventures, talks with Dapper Labs CBO Mik NaayBlockquote about the status, opportunities and challenges of NFT and blockchain gaming.

The original title: "universal block chain honeycomb school | NFT, swim and Metaverse"

Rongqi Tao and Mik NaayBlockquote are founding partners of NGC Ventures and CBO of Dapper Labs, respectively

Wanxiang Blockchain Honeycomb Institute Issue 54, We invited Tony Tao, founding partner of NCC Ventures, and Mik NaayBlockquote, CBO of Dapper Labs, to have an in-depth discussion on the current state of NFT and blockchain gaming, as well as the opportunities and challenges in the future.

Tony Tao: Dear friends of Wanxiang Blockchain Live Studio, good evening! It's a great honor to be able to share the next hour online with Mik, CBO of Dapper Labs. First we'll talk a little bit about Flow.

Flow is now a public chain known to almost all blockchain enthusiasts, and has carried out a lot of cooperation with big IPs in various fields such as sports, music and art. How did Flow attract world-famous partners and investors such as Ubisoft, NBA and UFC? What other areas does Flow plan to expand in the future? Thank you very much!

Mik NaayBlockquote: The reason we've been able to attract these high-profile investors and corporate partners is largely because of our previous experience working on CryptoCat apps, which allows us to understand the developers and users of the apps and understand what the big companies are really interested in. People will pay more attention to the user experience, which has to be fun, engaging, and most importantly, safe.

The Crypto Cat experience allows us to talk to these businesses and come up with solutions that they feel comfortable with. By partnering with Flow's parent company, Dapper Labs, you can achieve your goals and get a lot of attention from users.

Tony Tao: What will FLOW do in the future in China? What challenges do you think Flow may face in the Chinese market?

Mik NaayBlockquote: The Chinese market is very important for the world, especially for blockchain. We are also seeing a lot of innovation coming out of the Chinese market, which is also very important for Flow because Flow sees itself as a global network.

In order to enter the Chinese market, we will first work with some developers and partners. For example, Hashkey and SNZ, they will help us enter the Chinese market and do the initial development and development of the community.

At the same time, we also take a bottom-up approach to help businesses and technical people succeed by sharing our experience and tools with them to help them succeed.

Tony Tao: Also can you tell me if Flow is already working with big companies or IP in China? What exactly are they?

Mik NaayBlockquote: There is no way to share the big IP that we are negotiating with you right now, but luckily all the companies around the world are getting in touch with us and are interested in working with Dapper Labs and Flow. We hope to see some exciting collaborations in the near future.

Tony Tao: Does Flow plan to collaborate with Chinese native IP? As far as I know, the biggest native IP in China is the Three-Body Culture, and some traditional Chinese culture, such as the Forbidden City. Is Flow interested in these IPs? Compared with China's local public chain, what are the advantages of FLOW?

Mik NaayBlockquote: I will answer the second part of the question first. What are the advantages of Flow compared to the local public chain in China?

Developers based on the public chain face the same problem, which is not limited to China, but a global problem. Since the Flow team are all APP developers, we know the needs of developers. They do not want the fastest chain, on the contrary, they need a chain that can help the enterprises built on the chain to achieve success and meet the needs of users. This is a common problem faced by all developers around the world.

We this question has carried on the deliberation, is always thinking about how to help enterprises set up in our chain to achieve success, we do everything is in order to achieve this goal, hope to help to develop applications based on our chain and product number of users will be able to reach millions of level, and is safe and fun way to achieve this goal.

To answer the first part of your question, it is to cooperate with Chinese native IP. We believe that IP is the best and most important way to reach the mainstream audience outside the industry.

For Dapper Labs, for example, we cooperate with big IPs like NBA. Although NBA is an international brand, it is more popular in North America. We are more familiar with NBA, and we know about NBA. But in other regions, we want to help good developers understand the local IP, understand the uniqueness of the local market, and help them use the local IP to create a good user experience. Of course there will be Chinese developers building on Flow using Chinese native IP, but it will not be done by Dapper Labs themselves.

Tony Tao: And then the third question and one more question. As a Chinese, I personally hope to see that Chinese IP can be appreciated and consumed by global consumers, public and private chains, but it is quite difficult. Because in the NFT field, the power of discourse is basically controlled by some overseas groups, including the preference and threshold of aesthetic appreciation and capital. How does Flow view this issue? How will it help Chinese IP build global influence?

Mik NaayBlockquote: There are two ways we can help Chinese IP build global influence:

The first is to help IP developers and provide them with guidance on how to create user experiences that are appropriate for a global audience.

Dapper Labs is all about helping them develop experiences that work for a global audience, and we spend a lot of time with developers to give them the insights we get.

The second is to guide users to specific apps through the way of flow. The layout of the global network through FLOW enables the project to reach global investors and further reach global audiences.

Tony Tao: Will there be any future additions to Flow other than games and NFT, will there be a shift to or expansion of the Defi application in the future?

Mik NaayBlockquote: In the DEFI space, we're seeing 100,000 users increasingly using their money.

While Defi's trading volume is growing, the number of users has not grown substantially. The ability to bring in a large number of users through entertainment is the first step. The second step is to move into the Defi space. Take, for example, the NBA Top Shot game. Now the user can choose to serialize the NBA collection to a smaller size or borrow against it, thus further unlocking the potential of Defi. There are currently 5 or 6 projects on Flow that are doing a combination of DEFI and NFT, which can also be a bridge to the DEFI world.

Tony Tao: Partnering with IPs from different countries will always be limited in some countries. How will you help IPs from different countries enter new markets? NBA Top Shot, for example, limits participants' nationality through KYC. If there is a foreign IP to enter the Chinese market, how will FLOW help solve these problems?

Mik NaayBlockquote: When it comes to IP, it's different for every IP. What Flow can do is to become a bridge, a hub for docking, to help projects find the right partners and help them solve problems.

The second point is to divert users to different apps. Flow as a public chain, Dapper Labs as an enterprise can not solve all the problems. But fortunately, both large and small enterprises are willing to cooperate with us, which makes it convenient for us to find the right partner.

For example, if an American IP wants to enter the Chinese market, it must find a Chinese partner to help them solve various problems including legal and cultural issues. We can help to build such connections. Similarly, when Chinese IP enters the American market, it must be localized and more suitable for the local user behavior. We can also help them find the right partner.

In the final analysis, the core of everything is to understand the needs and find the right partners, and Flow plays the role of bridge and hub in this process.

Tony Tao: The next part of the question will focus more on NFT. The NFT market currently encompasses a variety of genres, including digital art, game items, bills, and more. However, consumers are more likely to buy NFT for collection purposes. Is it possible to get rid of the restriction of collectibles in the future, so as to enter a larger market?

Mik NaayBlockquote: The answer to that question is, of course, there is definitely the potential to go beyond collectibles.

Let's start with investment. People are investing now because they see the potential of NFT in the future. It's a collectible because it's easier to develop and requires less capital.

There wasn't a lot of money going into the NFT space, and as a developer you had to build something that was easy to build and fast to market. But now with more money coming in, developers can spend more time polishing the user experience.

For example, the early iPhone apps were very simple, but now, ten years later, you can see large, complex games, and things evolve in cycles.

Show the initial success first, and the big money will come in, and you'll have the money to do a bigger development and a better experience. We're only in the first six months of NFT, and I think we'll see more use cases in the next three or four years that will allow large consumers to have experiences that go beyond their current collections.

Tony Tao: What do you think about the use of NFT in digital ownership and access? At present, there are some negative cases in this field, such as music NFT and short video NFT. Even if ordinary users do not own NFT, they can enjoy music and watch short videos. Conversely, NFT users have no way to get additional benefits from this matter. What benefits does ownership of an NFT item bring to the use of NFT? In addition to collecting.

Mik NaayBlockquote: Because NFT is not the answer to all problems. As far as listening to music is concerned, the current "rental model" on Apple Music and Spotify is already good on its own, and real ownership doesn't deliver a 10-fold improvement over the current rental model. This is not to say that NFT can't be applied to music at all, but more to licensing, for example, by allowing owners of music to license seamlessly with each other, thereby solving copyright issues and composing new music and new albums. It could also solve the problem of payments, which are made through smart contracts rather than by a team of lawyers.

True digital ownership applies more to experiences that improve the business and the user by a factor of 10. For example, NBA Top Shot, if the digital collection we offer is just photos or pictures, the experience will be worse than if you buy the physical experience offline. Therefore, we choose videos, which capture the highlights of the stars. These highlights are exactly why fans like to watch basketball. In this way, the experience can be 10 times better than that of offline collectibles.

There are hundreds of different use cases that we see in music and art, but only some of them actually deliver a tenfold increase in experience, and some of them don't deliver a substantial increase in real ownership.

Tony Tao: Different digital assets are stored in different ways. For example, a picture of a photographic work. What do you think is the difference between the ownership of a downloaded hard disk and the ownership of an NFT?

Mike Naayblockquote: in view of this question, you at the beginning of design the Internet digital assets can not only solve the problem of ownership, also can be solved exactly is who created the digital assets, and these assets only quantity how many, this combination makes digital assets have value, and continue to have value.

Because the combination of all three makes digital assets a more realistic experience. A digital asset owned as a NFT is permanent, just like your offline physical asset, but with scarcity and ownership. Downloading such things to your computer's hard drive solves only one problem of ownership, but there is no way to prove who created these assets or how many of them exist.

NFT is the equivalent of connecting the real and virtual worlds.

Tony Tao: Personally, I would care more about investing. If there is a lot of digital asset creation in the future, I would care more about how I can invest in more worthy investments.

Based on this logic, I would wonder if NFT and DEFI exist to help the long tail market with potential digital assets that haven't been created yet but will be created with infinite possibilities in the future. It has Creator and more Investor. In the early stage, Creator and Investor can be combined to create potential digital assets in the future. This is my point of view.

Do you think there is a ceiling to the number of NFTs in the segment? Is there a ceiling for Top Shot in the NBA? What would the ceiling be? If so, how will the project partner align NFT volume with consumer demand?

Mik Naayblockquote: The question relates to the economic model, which was actually inspired by the fashion brand Superme. SuperMe does a quick launch on Thursdays, and people line up to buy it on Thursdays. Some people grab it and hold it for the long term, some sell it right away, and some see it as a long-term investment.

If you look at the growth rate of each investment, if you say the value is increasing, you might get excited, and you tell your friend that he has this situation. The key to all of this is to understand your growth rate, because you want to launch something that activates or attracts as many people as possible, so that people can get what they want, have those exciting moments, but not so many that it overwhelm the market, and it's all about understanding your audience. Understand how they're going to use your product when they finally get it, and how fast it's going to grow.

Tony Tao: What do you think of the current state of blockchain gaming and the future of blockchain gaming?

Mik NaayBlockquote: Blockchain gaming is still in its very early stages and has not yet been deployed on a large scale. Fortunately for blockchain game developers, users know the value of virtual worlds and virtual lands early on, so they are able to attract significant investment before the actual game is developed. Now that they have the money, let's hope they use it to build the world of the future.

But for blockchain games, they need to compete with centralized games, whether they want to or not. For the users of games, they want the same experience, but I believe that the future is definitely very bright, because games are something that we spend a lot of time on, so we want to have ownership of the game and be able to decide what it's going to be.

I don't think blockchain games have yet reached the point where they can compete with centralized games, but decentralization can unlock a lot of value for users and developers. I think it's going to be four to five years before the big thing happens, when people leave World of Warcraft and go to blockchain.

Tony Tao: Will the majority of games in the future combine NFT and GAME?

Mik NaayBlockquote: There are some games, like MMOs with big action matches, and war games like World of Warcraft, where anything that is persistent becomes a blockchain game.

But for a quick mobile game, like cutting fruit, it doesn't make sense to turn it into a blockchain game. In 10 years, those big immersive games will become blockchain games. What I'm talking about here is a blockchain game that has an open economy, where users have ownership of what they buy, and can even vote on the definition of the game's future.

Tony Tao: Apart from what Mik just said about blockchainization of large games, I myself am very interested in the idea of user investment in small games, but it seems to be a very difficult thing to do.

Compared with ordinary games, the advantage of blockchain games is expansibility, which can be expanded or even integrated between different games. In the future, many games can be integrated into the same world and the same universe. Where is the development and integration step?

Mike Naayblockquote: Right now I think we're in the early stages, but the potential is huge. For example, within two months of launching Crypto Cat, we've seen a lot of developers creating different cat-to-cat competitions, or putting hats on cats, a Facebook for cats, a Twitter for cats, and so on. That's really important. If there is a community for a particular asset type, developers can develop further based on the asset type, creating network effects. In the beginning, the asset types, the games gradually evolved and merged. But it's still early days, and the first step is for those early games to become sustainably profitable, and then developers can build on their existing games.

I don't think that's going to happen very far, because some of the early games are monetizing now, so I think you'll see real composability within 6-12 months, and then it's going to explode.

Tony Tao: Recently, the Metaverse concept has become very popular. How did you see Metaverse? Could it be the future? What will be the trend of integration with Gaming? How will the combination of Metaverse, NFT, and Blockchain Games come together?

Mik NaayBlockquote: My answer is a bit controversial, but I do believe that if Metaverse is going to be implemented, it's only on the blockchain. For Metaverse to exist, developers must develop without a license, the experience must come from the nexus, and more and more experiences must be developed, interoperable, users must own the experience, and be portable. In this way, Metaverse can be realized with unlimited creativity.

One of our early investors said that the smartest people are often not in the company, and true Metaverse is one that requires developers to build without your knowledge and approval.

Tony Tao: Thank you very much Mik. Metaverse is something that some of my friends and I want to do recently, and we will focus on the NFT field in China. I am an investor with a strong preference for Chinese culture. I am very fond of games and Metaverse and NFT.

I'm a big fan of Flow and Dapper Labs, and I personally think there will be a lot of interaction in these areas in the future, including investing and finding developers in China. That's all for today's sharing. Thank you for your time.

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