Animoca Brands Presents

New Founder Insights episode with Jihoz (Jeffrey Zirlin), the co-founder of Sky Mavis and creator of Axie Infinity!We discuss how Jihoz and his team have been busy building and how they are coming back strong with their extended platform centered around Web3 gaming.Jihoz and our entrepreneur-in-residence Rich Robinson chat about the origin of the company, the speed of its growth following the launch of the Ronin side chain, and the size of the company at its peak when it reached millions of users and nearly 12 million NFTs sold. Even today with 150,000 DAU, they estimate that they command nearly two-thirds of the Web3 gaming space.They cover the phenomenal rise of scholarships for gamers that subsequently led to a surge of gaming guilds and the involvement of millions of scholars playing Axies in the Philippines, Southeast Asia and around the world.On the pod, they explore the platform that Sky Mavis has rolled out with Ronin to enforce creator royalties and the challenges and lessons learned from building and maintaining its infrastructure.⭐Jeffrey 'Jihoz' Zirlin, co-founder of Sky Mavis🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the co-founder of Blowfish Studios Ben Lee - on their Early Access launch of their stunning AAA RPG Phantom Galaxies.Ben and our entrepreneur-in-residence Rich Robinson discuss the Web2 and Web3 blended elements of the game and how launching on both Steam and Epic Games Store can further help onboard new users to Web3 gaming.They chat about Blowfish Studios’ vision of building accessible, super fun, world-class Web3 gaming for true gamers and how that core gameplay awesomeness is the North star of the studio.On the pod, they further dig into Ben’s exemplary entrepreneurial journey and the 12-year history of the studio, uncovering the even longer history of Ben and his co-founder Aaron, throwing it back to the 1990’s and reminiscing about lessons learned along the way.⭐Ben Lee, co-founder of Blowfish Studios🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on X to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the co-founders of Futureverse Shara Senderoff and Aaron McDonald.We discuss how Futureverse raised a whopping US$54 million series to build the open metaverse and how they acquired 11 companies off the bat with 250 staff with more than 6 years of experience already building virtual worlds to get a head start.Shara and Aaron talk about their vision of building tools for users to delightfully accelerate the building and immersive experiences inside Futureverse. The future is unevenly distributed and their vision is to more rapidly and equitably distribute the future to users.On the pod, we dig into how their entrepreneurial, investment and movie production backgrounds converge to give them the tools and competitive advantages any startup needs to succeed. ⭐Aaron McDonald, co-founder of Futureverse⭐Shara Senderoff, co-founder of Futureverse🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

In this podcast, we sit down with Joe McCann from Asymmetric and discuss Solana as a technology and ecosystem and its unique features compared to other blockchains, particularly Ethereum. Joe explains how Solana's approach to being a Layer 1 blockchain is different and more performant due to its emphasis on parallel processing. He compares it to CPU performance improvement over time. Solana's focus on Rust as its core programming language, its scalability and decentralization, and its tightly integrated architecture are also highlighted as distinguishing features. Joe shares his views on the potential tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and highlights the precedent set by USDC. He believes that established financial product companies may tokenize their products, such as ETFs, to expand their trading hours, and this is more likely to happen before more complex RWAs like mortgage bonds and corporate credit get tokenized. The interview concludes with a discussion of exciting experiments in the Solana ecosystem, including projects like Dialect, staking and liquid staking initiatives, and DePIN, all driven by the unique features of Solana.⭐Joe McCann, Asymmetric 🔹 The Open Metaverse Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' #tokenomics team, Mohamed Ezeldin and Mehdi Farooq. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.

Today we are very pleased to welcome Joel Monegro of Placeholder VC to our podcast. From working on payments infrastructure in the Dominican Republic, Joel entered venture capital in 2014 and started his own Placeholder VC in 2017. He is a prolific writer and we started off by discussing his recent article “Ethereum is Like Android and Solana is Like iOS”.We explored this from the angles of modularisation and standardisation, noting how, like Android, instead of vertically integrating the stack, Ethereum is becoming more of a platform for L2s to settle on, and most of the users of Ethereum are not using Mainnet directly but rather L2 networks. Solana, on the other hand, gives the impression of iOS in the sense that user experiences are superior because developers don’t have to think about deploying on multiple L2s and having to manage all those trade offs. In a multichain future, Joel envisions millions of blockchains, including virtual blockchains built on top of others, serving as the backend for online services.Joel shared his views on the web3 and AI intersection, anticipating the proliferation of AI agents and the role of blockchain networks in accommodating their transactions and interactions. Finally, we considered some DePIN projects, emerging social networks on Layer 2 solutions, and the regulatory focus on stablecoins for real-world assets signifying the ongoing generational transition in the blockchain industry. Enjoy his fascinating perspectives and delivery. ⭐Joel Monegro, Partner at Placeholder VC🔹 The Open Metaverse Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' #tokenomics team, Mohamed Ezeldin and Mehdi Farooq. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.

Today we meet with Alex Tapscott, globally-recognised author, speaker and investor, to gain more insight into his recently published book, “Web3: Charting the Internet’s Next Economic and Cultural Frontier”. This potent introduction and guide to web3 covers everything from the metaverse and NFTs to DAOs, decentralised finance and self-sovereign identity. In this podcast episode, we start off with exploring the cultural monetisation aspects of web3 and how they relate to digital ownership. Alex shares his thoughts on the convergence of web3 and AI, as well as extended reality and decentralised compute. We query web3’s potential role in easing income inequality in the world. Finally, we take a look at DePIN, DeSCI, SocialFi and some other potential killeruse cases for crypto. ⭐Alex Tapscott 🔹 The Open Metaverse Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' #tokenomics team, Mohamed Ezeldin and Mehdi Farooq. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the co-founder and CEO of GAMEE - Bozena Rezab.We discuss how GAMEE is a seasoned company with SEVEN BILLION gameplays that Animoca Brands acquired in 2020 and how the company is evolving in the Web3 space.We talk about how Beast Arcade is a culmination of the learnings around launching multiple Web3 games over the years and working to onboard the non-Web3 natives to a fun and compelling gaming experience where the Web3 layer is invisible.We deep dive into how the company went from a local company in the Czech Republic to a global player creating games for NASA and being the first company to make games on Telegram.Watch the full episode here!⭐Bozena Rezab, CEO and Co-founder of GAMEE🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the founder and CEO of @pyratzlabs - Bilal El Alamy.We discuss how PyratzLabs is ideally placed in Paris, since France is a Web3 powerhouse with the likes of The Sandbox, Ledger, Life Beyond, Ledger, and other aspiring startups. Bilal breaks down how PyratzLabs is creating new startups through their studio model, investing in Web3 startups and growing companies through their accelerator.We deep dive into @dogamitv5939, one of the stars in their portfolio creating a compelling Web3 Tamagotchi-style pet game on the blockchain.We also talk about balancing the joyful stress of startup life with sports and nature. Go-karting and freediving are two major sports that Bilal immerses himself in to destress and challenge himself.Watch the full episode here! ⭐Bilal El Alamy, founder and CEO of PyratzLabs🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the founder and CEO of nWay - Taehoon TK Kim and their exciting new launch of Wreck League — a 3D mech-fighting game that will incorporate the Bored Ape Yacht Club and other Yuga Labs-created Ethereum NFT collections in its first season. We discuss how Wreck League is the Megaverse’s preeminent mech sports combat organization, known for its spectacular battles, robust customization, and competitive culture. nWay—which previously developed licensed “Power Rangers” games, and is a subsidiary of publisher and metaverse investor Animoca Brands—has licensed Yuga’s Bored Ape Yacht Club characters for Wreck League, along with the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Koda creatures from Yuga’s Otherdeed NFTs, and the Bored Ape Kennel Club. TK outlines how Wreck League matches are 1-versus-1 real-time battles in which players pilot custom-created mechs against one another in head-to-head combat with cross-play functionality, the action transcends devices, allowing you to compete on mobile, PC, or Mac. We explore the innovative approach around how 10 NFT parts create 1 mech NFT. Each part comes with its own stats and skills that determine how the mech plays in battle. Mechs can be disassembled, returning the 10 parts to the player allowing them to fully swap out parts to augment, customize, or rebuild their mechs to create an amazing "1.5 quadrillion" different combinations. TK talks about his entrepreneurial journey and how pioneering cross-platform and 1v1 only play has parallels to how Wreck League is bridging Web2 and Web3.⭐Taehoon Kim, founder and CEO of nWay🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.🔹Follow us on our twitter to stay up to date with the latest episodes! https://twitter.com/animocabrandsDisclaimer: The content of this video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as investment advice and does not offer, solicit, or recommend any investment product.

New Founder Insights episode with the founders of KLKTN and SFT Studios - Daisuke Iwase, Andrew Yeong and David Taing on their exciting Weebox launch.In this episode, the KLKTN team chats with Rich Robinson about the insanely passionate and huge anime community and why it’s so important for the adoption of Web3.Together, they deep dive into the origins of KLKTN, Japanese IP, and the incredible opportunity of the physical and digital figurine market. They also assess how e-figurines are a gamechanger for Web3, along with the importance, size, and opportunity of the physical and digital figurine market. ERC 6551 is demystified in this episode and the exciting ways in how it can make NFTs mutable and customizable.Last but not least, this episode highlights the importance of an emotional connection around the storytelling and community of the IP, and how that can be extended phygitally. Watch the full episode here!⭐Daisuke Iwase, co-founder of KLKTN⭐Andrew Yeong Lee, co-founder of KLKTN⭐David Taing, co-founder of KLKTN🔹 The Founder Insights Podcast is brought to you by Animoca Brands' entrepreneur-in-residence, Richard Robinson. If you are interested in learning more about broadly understood crypto, follow https://twitter.com/animocaresearch.