[SPEAKER_01]: What's up, everyone?
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to another great episode of The Crypto Mavericks, and we have a great guest here for you today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in your full.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the founder of Core Protocol.
[SPEAKER_01]: Core Protocols are decentralized infrastructure later for intellectual property that helps creators register, manage, license, monetize IP across music, art, games, film, and more.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have a huge focus.
[SPEAKER_01]: on AI tooling, just really excited to sit down and talk to Inder about what he's building, Inder, thanks for jumping on the podcast today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great to be here, great to see you guys Brian and Joe, thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're fired up and looking into the company.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like you've been up to a lot of big things and really excited to talk about the AI tooling that's that's certainly been a buzzword over the past year or so.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we dive in and we talk about all things core related with love to know a little bit about your background and how you got involved, how you created core protocol.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure, so I'll try to make it short.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was born in Kenya, Nairobi, moved to London when I was about 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: And very early on, got into music, art, and even set up my first business when I was around 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first proper business, I set up when I was, I think I was 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was helping major brands collaborate with creators and looking at how we could use innovation and technology to really kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: unlock new ways for these brands to, you know, make money, connect with their audiences and more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up working with some amazing clients, partners like Disney, Nike, LeCost, HSBC.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, by the age of 25, I was running an agency, I kind of got this amazing experience of working with global organizations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: It was around that time I started to really get into blockchain.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very early on, it was very theoretical, people were proposing how blockchain could be used to transform the music industry, the film and TV industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And specifically looking at things like intellectual property and rights, and how these could be brought onto the blockchain and ultimately unlock so much fragmentation that exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went deep into that journey, you know, started studying the blockchain extremely deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a few years later, I had a vision for this business, which was really to build out an ecosystem of products for IP holders.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I connected with Dead Mouse, the musician and his manager, and another amazing musician called Richie Horton and his manager.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we came together to form the company and the vision was to build infrastructure and tools to help IP holders monetize more effectively using the blockchain using AI and really future proof, you know, their businesses essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a dead mouse at NFT NYC a couple years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that fair?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm pretty sure that was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we were involved with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a forgotten name of the venue was a heat venue.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's a really cool like big production show in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Mirage, it must have been.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you had that that was it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what a cool what a cool experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that that was a great time actually I saw today come across the newswater that they're bringing back NFT NYC so that that should be super interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's jump, I have a couple of questions here about the broader IP landscape before we dive a little bit deeper into core.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's broken with the current IP landscape?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the overall vision of it and what needs changed?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a few aspects that you could look at.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, first of all, the world is obviously changing significantly, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The rise of AI has introduced almost an existential crisis for IP holders because what you have are these model models being trained on all of the world's knowledge and content.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no legal regulation that's in place right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no business model that is truly scaled, which allows these IP holders to license effectively and also monetize when it comes to their content being used within the context of AI.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd say that's one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the big kind of overarching narrative that everyone's kind of aware of.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say the second to that is we're living in this world where we're seeing more
[SPEAKER_00]: Generally, excited about these things, but again, don't have the tools to distribute and allow micro-licensing at scale.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one IP holder like a film and TV company or a musician doesn't can't easily allow 100,000 people to remix their assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: issue take down capture value and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we've got this micro licensing problem, which exists one on the side of AI, but also on the side of content creators.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, there's some of the, let's say things that exist on one end.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other side of it is, I think, you know, just with the rise of blockchain and new ways to raise capital for capital formation, you're seeing this across the board, whether it's a artist, a label, a film and TV production, a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: they're looking for ways to raise capital to fund their projects and blockchain introduces some great mechanisms for capital formation that allows projects to essentially build directly with their communities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'd say these are some of the things that we kind of see as, you know, the...
[SPEAKER_00]: the biggest issues in the space.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is licensing at scale, whether it's to co-creators or to AI companies.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other is then capital formation and how do these IP holders ultimately raise capital around their assets in new, interesting ways, that illegally feasible.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we talk a lot about a lot of different use cases for blockchain, you know, from everything from cross port payments to just making systems just more efficient and disrupt all these all these other industries, but you hit the nail on the head that blockchain is the real infrastructure for ownership licensing royalties and I I guess that's one thing that was always really attracted to me with blockchain because I just felt like it was a more efficient safer system for creators.
[SPEAKER_00]: for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I completely agree with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, it's taken time for adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we work with a lot of publicly traded companies where sometimes it's taken over a year and a half for their legal team to fully get to grips with how this new, let's say, design and commercial model might work for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, as I think,
[SPEAKER_00]: The legal frameworks are now more established, and there's a little bit more clarity across the world around how tokens can work, how things like this can operate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also blockchain infrastructure that actually can be legally enforceable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all good and well saying, we'll put your licenses on the blockchain and we'll let people remix these.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the big question as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: is that legally enforceable in a smart contract like is there truly a system that can work that you know isn't just in this like fixed scenario but actually applies on a broader level.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's taken time you know for the industry to get there to work through the problem set and actually you know develop solutions that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if we go in shape exactly there, how does that look like in terms of, you know, pay out from the creator auto-weighted end user with AI in between that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there any use cases you can showcase?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, I can talk about one and maybe I can share a clip that you can, you can splice into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of our products is called chorus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a music remixing platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got songs from Grammy-winning musicians and superstars like Image and Heep and others who've basically put their songs up on this platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it has an AI engine underneath it that allows anyone to remix those songs within a few clicks of a button.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've seen,
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, some really great examples where artists will have fans generate sometimes hundreds of thousands of remixes of their song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the business model becomes interesting because we're seeing artists generate more revenue in 24 hours using these tools than they would versus a year on Spotify.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's it's an interesting use case because first of all, just from the engagement level, it's about an
[SPEAKER_00]: AI is in the background allowing the fan to be a co-creator to be a remixer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then where it gets interesting is then all of these songs are registered on the blockchain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every song is issued with a license identifying what exactly that song can be used for, whether it has commercial rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: who needs to get splits and payouts from these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really where I think this kind of moves into the next stages.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that one example of UGC or fan remixes, we've got an ethical use case where the artist is allowing someone to use their IP.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can then
[SPEAKER_00]: capture the value from all of these new remixes that are generated.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they go out to Spotify, if they're traded on secondary marketplaces, if they're shared on socials, you know, the artist is ultimately capturing the value.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we've seen some cool examples, like I said, with tier one artists who will publicly say, this has made me more money in 24 hours than I would on Spotify in a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: to emerging musicians who will basically be able to pay their rent off the back of using a format like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course the technology is exciting, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: AI remixing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's blockchain rights management, but actually the end solution here is a new business model that actually works.
[SPEAKER_02]: How is that paid out, even on my asking, is it fiat?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it crypto currently?
[SPEAKER_00]: We give the artist the option to decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some partners that we work with.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do transfers into Fiat.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, Kiemannet work is a partner that we've been collaborating with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they can basically, if the artist wants it in Fiat, Kiemannet will basically transfer out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But most artists are accepting it in crypto.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they'll basically get money transferred straight into their wallet.
[SPEAKER_00]: usually eat and they can then account directly, you know, how they want, they can withdraw when they want and yeah basically kind of manage their finances accordingly.
[SPEAKER_02]: This seems something that would fit really nicely with TikTok.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all about musicality and creation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we all heard a story of Romeo creating a Dr. Pepper Jingle.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something that it wouldn't think of, creating an IP for, but it makes sense to have that feature available.
[SPEAKER_02]: Am I thinking about it incorrectly here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there...
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's definitely a use case for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think TikTok is one of the outputs of a product like chorus where we see whether it's major labels and dependent artists using it and then expecting the distribution of these assets to go out onto TikTok and
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, without going into like the boring detail, the important part is then even though it's a derivative of an original song, TikTok will still know that this is related to this original track.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they can issue their payment structures as they need to as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think over time those will be some of the things that also scale, you know, it is being able to then take these
[SPEAKER_00]: on-chain databases and cross-pollinate them with some of the other databases on other social channels as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm super curious about this because I find like because Joe and I are so involved with like education of blockchain and all the new systems and Web3 is such an evolving space.
[SPEAKER_01]: We literally wake up every day and there's new tools or a new meta and a lot of creators.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would imagine find Web3 slightly confusing, maybe a little intimidating because that's not their wheelhouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you designing core to be really useful and accessible and just not technically impressive?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, you know, there's a balancing act there because we have a suite of SDK tools which any developer can build upon and, you know, we're going heavy into also making sure that, you know, there'll be vibe coding solutions so people can actually build on the infrastructure without needing to know how to code and, you know, work a smart contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, that would say that's one of the key use cases is it is an infrastructure for developers and enterprises
[SPEAKER_00]: technical knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then most of the products, it's all in the background, which I think is the direction that the spaces needed to go in for a while in order to drive mass adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's simple things like account abstraction, you don't need to know about wallets, you know, you can you can pay with fiat, you know, things like that, I think are pretty standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's more about focusing on, you know, ultimately what the products do for the
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a tough balancing act because I think obviously over time, some of the beauty of blockchain is that you can be a participant and an owner in the network.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that comes with these significant benefits, you know, to a customer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think for us, we look at that as part of a journey of education.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't users don't necessarily need to know about all of that on day one, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They come for the products and then they stay for the network over time as we, we show them the benefits of, you know, utilizing these tools.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you nailed it and I feel like some of the most successful companies that we've met with in the web three space and they say exactly what you're saying is that you don't even realize you're utilizing blockchain because that's all that's all the back end stuff and I think that's a really well thought out way to introduce it to people because maybe they have a sincere interest at the end of the day, maybe they don't, but it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talked about a big focus early before we jumped on about your AI tooling.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to know about the relationship between AI and the IP where it is now and how you think that's going to evolve over the next few years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a few angles to it that we're really excited about.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, it's creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we have these created tools that already exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can remix music, you can make videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've been testing now with a broad spectrum of IPs, whether it's the music artists, whether it's IPs like Black Mirror, which is one of the most watch TV shows on Netflix.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been experimenting with lots of fun AI generation systems on the creation side.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second is when it comes to intelligence, you know, I think we see a huge opportunity here where AI tools can help these IP holders, whether it's large enterprises and publicly traded companies that we work with like Black Mirror and BannerJ, who's a huge organization, all the way down to the labels and more, is how do they use these AIs to
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, you have more intelligence around their business and we have a few products that are about to launch in market over the next 30 days that you'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is called Pacer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could think about it as an AI manager for musicians.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will analyze your career.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will look at all of the different channels that you've connected, your socials, your Spotify.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it will give you a roadmap and a North Star plan on where your metric should be over the next 30, 60, 90 days.
[SPEAKER_00]: It then has a bunch of agentic workflows that you can activate to basically help automate many of these aspects of your music career and so that's one really cool use case.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen some amazing adoption, we'll be announcing some of the partners on that side.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a similar tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the content creator side called Streamline.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a similar idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's operating system for content creators to manage their career.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can get insights around what content is working.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can basically help plan their roadmap and six-month strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's constantly learning from everything you put out into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: where you sit in the market and giving you suggestions on how to optimize, to basically generate more revenue, build more fans, and be more effective at what you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I'd say those are two elements that we're really excited about.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is on the creation side, the other is on the intelligence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is underpinned with workflows.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we see across all these industries we work with in the broader kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: industry, whether it's film TV, whether it's music, workflow automation is actually going to be the thing that drives a lot of the big efficiency and adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're creating, you know, we have dozens of not hundreds of workflows that we've started creating, which are hyper focused on different use cases.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so those are some of the benefits that you'll get when you register your IP on the core protocol.
[SPEAKER_00]: You connect your accounts and then you also have access to these workflow automation systems which are one just understanding where you are in the landscape and then giving you the tools to automate what you need to generate more revenue, build your customer base and be more efficient in the, I think of as a renaissance that we're currently going through right, more broadly.
[SPEAKER_02]: What were you guys when I was a young child, a bride doesn't notice, but it had aspirations of being a canto pop star back in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is so exciting for my young son and my soon to be son of another one, not soon to be son.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's very exciting for my kids overall.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a, I'm a big kid too, and I see a lot of your partnerships, you know, Salana and
[SPEAKER_02]: Niantic, because I play Pokemon Go all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what, how has that partnership been?
[SPEAKER_02]: And how does that fit into your picture?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, they're all about augmented reality, and geographical location.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell us about that partnership.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's an amazing partnership.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nantes obviously is an incredible company.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very blessed to have them on as investors.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were one of the first ever investments they made from then you fund, which they launched a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have a few products that are in early stealth right now that use some of their infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have some really cool, as you mentioned, augmented reality, geospatial,
[SPEAKER_00]: tech tech, which is basically mapped the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, there's a few needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is continuing to map the world and provide that data set so that people can build businesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we see an opportunity there that we're working with some partners on around, you've been providing more geodata within the Niantic ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also some fun, I would say maybe more kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say entertainment led products which kind of use the Niantic SDKs to basically build new geo location based products.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's about as much as I can kind of go into now, but, you know, we're kind of looking at two ends of the spectrum, one which is, you know, how do we.
[SPEAKER_00]: Enable more GEO content to be plugged in to the hive of data and reward people for participating in such a system and then the other is enabling new products within the ecosystem to be built on their toolset.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously in the entertainment world, there's a few issues out there and one's the issue of fragmented ownership or maybe people who have multiple rights to a certain piece of content.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's Core help solve that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's it's it's it's interesting because we started in music and then we expanded out across multiple sectors music is actually one of the hardest spaces when it comes to this you know you could take a single song and it may have 40 song writers associated with it and they all have right so you know if you for example wanted to get that song in a game or into a film.
[SPEAKER_00]: they all need to approve which means things go really slowly and so we actually kind of engineered around that problem first which was thinking about you know IP assets where there are multiple rights holders and approvals is actually one of the main challenges and friction points when it comes to then how do we further monetize these assets and so we have a platform that will be launching where you know it enables things like licensing at scale
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, people can set their rights, they can set their, you know, what they're willing to accept.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that's kind of one of the first steps is really kind of enabling that approval process, much more.
[SPEAKER_00]: This all kind of happens at the, let's say at the origin level, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Once an IP asset is registered,
[SPEAKER_00]: all of the owners of that IP asset need to also be registered as well with their relevant ownership data, you know, who owns what, what kind of royalty rates or revenue cuts are they expecting if there's monetization, what kind of rights do they have when it comes to approvals?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, codifying all of that is you could say like this,
[SPEAKER_00]: really foundational database that powers the holy ecosystem going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: It enables us to allow things like permissionless licensing at scale, you know, for AI company wants to license thousands of assets very quickly without needing to go through multiple negotiations and discussions, you know, things like that can happen, you know, at the registration level,
[SPEAKER_00]: Beyond that, everything kind of goes back into payments.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really excited about a genetic payment flows, not only one allowing payments to be split on the blockchain really quickly, but also allowing new ways for rights holders to actually have these agents go out and negotiate for them, secure deals on their behalf and accept payments or make payments the other way.
[SPEAKER_00]: let's say small proof of concept environments first and then kind of scaled out to to wider industries.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, lots of, I think lots of exciting, you know, opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, the key thing is really it's about that original data, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to know first of all, proof of ownership, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that makes blockchain so exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I think without that, the rest of the ecosystem doesn't work as effectively.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, that proof of ownership pieces still, you know, fundamental, you know, for everything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you incentivize creators to get into your ecosystem?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that you have a core token and how's that been onboarding creators to utilize the platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, you know, we always lead first of all with the product and the value proposition, you know, I think being in the space for many years, you know, we've seen how certain mechanics can attract the wrong audiences, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You may just get people who come into just, let's say farm and pull away value and actually have no long term goal of staying and using the product.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for us, everything is first product led, like, you know, these are products that solve
[SPEAKER_00]: problems for users, whether it's enterprise partners that we work with, whether it's you know, and those who might come on as validators on a much bigger picture level or individual users who are just kind of utilizing tools, you know, that's that's important for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do have, you know, XP systems kind of univide across all of our products that you'll start to see rolled out and those are measures off.
[SPEAKER_00]: engagement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, things like that will be useful for us as we think about, you know, how to reward active participation in the network.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, like, those are some of the, let's say, early, you know, touch points that we think about, you know, we're really, um, I would say,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, some of the exciting things in terms of incentivizing is like, let's just take one example like Black Mirror, we have tools that allow you to remix and build with the Black Mirror IP.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nowhere else on the planet, you can do that ethically legally and collaborate with an IP holder.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is one of Netflix's most watch TV shows billions of views every season.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have that across multiple other segments, and so that forces one of the big incentive point as well, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you're coming here because you can collaborate with these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can build on their assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can actually use these as a launch pad to, you know, to, to, to,
[SPEAKER_00]: potentially generate revenue to get closer to these IPs and so I'd say that's also a great incentive point for us is we break down these barriers of access that typically for most people were completely inaccessible and you know we've seen that work really well on the black mirror side hundreds of thousands of assets generated on the music side over a million songs generated by people who are fans who are you know creators and
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of their, some of their rational is I get to remix, you know, IP in an ethical way and get closer to these amazing partners.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, those are some of the amazing things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, of course, as I mentioned, we do have XP systems and things like that and we do think heavily around how the token will be used, you know, to reward ultimately active participation and loyalty.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, you go first.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll leave you for later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I was okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to follow the fun one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mine's not so fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: The fun one is I see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I would, I believe to be a clone next and within the chorus image imaging.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you guys acquire clone X, the high P, but that sounds a fun question.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then also number two is that were you in the creation world?
[SPEAKER_02]: I see you're producing it, but guitar, you seem to be a subant of some sorts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you making tracks under?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so on the close next side, that was an early purchase we've made in the years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been in the space for maybe five years or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess since like inception of Web 3's kind of big launch moment, you know, with top shot and everything else that kind of happened at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we bought a close next early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we used it as a character in some of our marketing, you know, to
[SPEAKER_00]: medium effect, but you know, I've always been a fan of them, and I hope that project comes back like a Phoenix, because I think it was a great project for the space and everything it represented.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the creation side, yeah, like, you know, I make music, I've been making music for many years, and I, you know, build products as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the idea of a polymath, you know, someone who kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: is multi-skilled, like a DaVinci.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying I'm DaVinci, but I've always loved this idea of just being multi-skilled and take a lot of joy and creating things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I make music for fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an alias which I'm currently working on on the side, on my Saturdays when I get a brief moment off, which any uses a lot of our tools, which also helps, it's like, you know, I'm going to get to be a test case for some things that we're kind of building out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it Dr. Doom?
[SPEAKER_02]: I see one hand in you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that your alien?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that your doctor?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, the MF.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, the MF Doom is a great artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Palace.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can share some, I'll share some stuff on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still an early dev, but it's sort of like a, you know, very visual narrative-based music project, you know, combining a lot of new tools with like AI video and live music, live visuals, stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's, it's for fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's the best way to like,
[SPEAKER_00]: D-stress, I find, you know, you just completely zone out and you don't think about much and then when you come back you just have a much clearer Lens on everything and so I've kind of always tried to keep up, you know, the creative hobby
[SPEAKER_01]: Joe Joe is definitely on whatever's in your background and now I find myself like breaking down every post when you have in your background and how it's associated but amazing stuff and you're obviously doing some big things in the world of entertainment kind of the last question for me is what's the bigger message that you would have for creators builders and the industry to understand about where this is all
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one is we are in AI Renaissance.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no doubt about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single day we see new technologies that will transform the way people work, give them access to much more insightful data that they can act upon and it can potentially bring back,
[SPEAKER_00]: So much time in your life to do other things, but also maybe to just be infinitely more effective, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're really passionate about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the AI rails for builders, for creators, for enterprises are still being formed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a trillion dollar sector, in every sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I'll just lean into that, you know, obviously research it, try the tools out yourself, figure out how these things can be useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're doing is trying to build out, you know, that infrastructure and that tooling, so that, you know, the markets that we're focused on can adopt this quickly and start to see the productivity and revenue gains fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's cool, you know, it's this opportunity where like, you know, kind of said polymath, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's poor idea, this is your moment, you know, whatever you kind of envisioned like you wanted to do, build a product, make a film, make music.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, whatever it is, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have this opportunity to like upskill yourself at such an infinite pace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, lean into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such an exciting, you know, time to be, to be alive, to be creative,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, last question for me is, we've seen a lot of, I wouldn't call core crypto project specifically per se, how do you reach escape velocity, meaning a true adoption, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been such a long time and a lot of idealistic, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... use cases come out not not just for music but for everything right as seems like finance has just really let the way and we're barely getting there what's like the biggest hiccup seems like a i adoption this year especially is going to really help with what you're building alongside everything else i want to know of like one
[SPEAKER_02]: restaurant company that I talk about to Brian on a time that really utilize blockchain to you know really help the customers at the end of the day that's still around from five six years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what is that for for you guys?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's what's the what's a win in 2026 look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a few angles to that question.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, is we are very focused on enterprise partnerships, big collaborations, like we have publicly traded companies who already work with us, who already tokenize with us and they have been doing so for three, four years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are companies which own hundreds of billions of dollars worth of IP assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're going to continue that path of onboarding them.
[SPEAKER_00]: building tools for these companies and this stuff happens in the background, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it may not be like publicly available, you know, but you can kind of see it slowly with black mirror and others.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one, you know, for us is we continue these enterprise partnerships, you know, corner the market where we see it being very exciting and where all of our relationships are.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second is hit products.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we ultimately live and die in the grand scheme of things when it comes to a network with products that cut through and gain mass adoption in a meaningful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're very excited about continuing to build and incubate products that we think have a huge potential across the ecosystem, whether they're created tools, whether they're tools to help drive growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: or whether there are other things that lean into more financialization, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have these three buckets we kind of focus on, and so we'll continue incubating and building products that we think, you know, have this hit potential, and you know, there's a bit of a flywheel here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have maybe an unfair advantage that we have such a high,
[SPEAKER_00]: profile celebrity and IP ecosystem already within the project.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have companies that generate hundreds of millions of dollars that are working with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got companies that have billions of dollars and are publicly traded.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have musicians who have billions of streams and this goes across multiple sectors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we lean into that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That may be an unfair advantage that we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the goal is continuing leaning into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Build with these partners, you know, leverage their audiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, build products that can bring their customer bases, you know, their fans, their communities on chain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it's a journey, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been in the space for a few years now and it's always a journey and, you know, I think, you know, I like, you know, hopefully our products to do the talking, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, people to be able to see them use them and you know, you can kind of see the conviction, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not vaporware.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like real stuff targeting real problems and gaining, you know, hopefully meaningful traction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really well said, and I feel confident here because it obviously seems like you have a super strong grasp of exactly what's happening in the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love your thought process behind AI in the creativity, it can bloom and how we just,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easier than ever to create something now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we just need to kind of have the ideas and you're providing the tools, you're providing the infrastructure for people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So love the work you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for anybody in the audience that wants to learn more about core protocol, they want to learn more about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where can we point them in the direction?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can, you know, core protocol website, which is, I think we've just changed the domain today because we're relaunching it, but it's coreprojectical.io, you can go to the website, check it out, go to the Twitter, core protocol, it's just core protocol, k-o-r protocol, and then myself, it's in the full, my first name, surname, 22, you can
[SPEAKER_00]: Hit me up on X, you know, I'm always open to chat more than DMs with people, you know, people want to even just ask more questions, you know, we're always happy to chat, you know, whether it's with builders or, you know, community members excited about the project or or more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a good way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll also want to link in as a good place, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, those will be some of the first touch points and yeah, you know, keep a look out.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's going to be a lot of stuff happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a pretty packed road map of lawn shares of kind of ecosystem projects going live.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, hopefully there are a lot of exciting stuff to look forward to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, more broadly, a challenging market, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for lots of lots of projects.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hopefully will bring some some good, you know, excitement for the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: amazing stuff and for everybody in the audience we get put those links down below in the description so I highly suggest that you check it out because they're doing some huge things in the space and they're appreciate you jumping on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great to be here guys looking forward to the launch and of course as mentioned anyone has any questions DME and you know hopefully looking forward to doing a follow up shortly after maybe in a few months or so and we can kind of do a track on where progress is and all the new stuff that's coming in the ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to have you back on, so a lot of things changing in space, and that sounds great to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect.