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      Does Creator Reputation Dictate NFT Value? | Project: Human Park

      NFTs Are Coming to Instagram Says Mark Zuckerberg - Decrypt

       

      Transcript:

      [00:00:00] Today on all about affordable NFTs. We're talking about whether or not the creator's reputation dictates the value of the NFT. I'm excited to get into that theme, but first, Andrew, what are we seeing in the news?

      [00:00:13] Hey, George. And NFTs again yet we are seeing what we see volume trending downward over all, but it is starting to pick up a bit. I noticed on a weekly basis. So seeing it pick up a bit, and I think that's been a lot to do with board apes, recently, board apes Mutant apes, the board.

      [00:00:32] Is it the board kennel? Sorry, board Abe kennel club. The three projects. Taking a lot of volume recently, there was anticipation of a big drop or drop of a new token, the ape token from the board a creator's you, the labs that has now dropped, and we've definitely seen a ton of volume there. So I think that's been part of, what's been picking up the volume, but I think that's also a spurred some activity away from those projects, as well as, some people are selling and help a lot more ease than they had, especially if they've been long-term holders.

      [00:01:04] That's interesting because you're looking at an overall market past seven days, ish, up 20, 25%. But the interesting thing it's I'm not holding back. Abe anything. And so I see all this activity, I'm like, nice, but so what, it's not helping the long tail, the market, which still feels a little chilly to me.

      [00:01:20] But what you're saying is when some of that profit taking occurs, it actually can lead to smoothing out in the market and money chasing up. What's the next aid. What's the next piece that people may be jumping in. 

      [00:01:31] Yeah, I think so. Anyway, I've seen some bigger sales know. Some notable collections some bigger sales and squiggles. Some punks have certainly rallied on news that we haven't gotten to this yet, but the news that UGA labs has actually purchased the IP to them. That's improve the price.

      [00:01:48] There need bits as well from larva labs and I've seen some big artists like X copy getting some big sales. So I think there is some some sort of distribution going on. As board apes have certainly had the top price. You're not being said after the token dropped the price, the floor price would drop quite a bit.

      [00:02:06] I think it had reached over a hundred. Before the airdrop and then dropped to, I don't know, maybe in the eighties after that. I also wouldn't say that's really much of a loss if you did get the airdrop I don't know what it was worth, but I I think it was a pretty hefty sum for anyone that was holding an actual board, a.

      [00:02:23] Yeah. And you're talking about that news of larva labs, literally getting bought by you, the labs our Villa. The famous creators of punks and also me bits. And you go the upstart from last year, the creators of board apes and all of the derivatives inside of that, literally just bought it up.

      [00:02:41] Yeah. 

      [00:02:42] I would've never predicted 

      [00:02:43] Than the price flipping. This is really a passing of the 

      [00:02:47] it's not a flipping. It's a binding. 

      [00:02:49] Yeah. And I don't know that it's really passing the torch. I think, as we'll discuss verbal labs had not necessarily handled a lot of different issues the best and you iLabs has certainly Written this wave quite well to a, they've got a great reputation.

      [00:03:04] They are commanding a hefty price. Their valuation has skyrocketed. And they've used that to go ahead and just buy the IP, but this, and, I think it has, as I said the price of both punks and B bits have gone up quite a bit on the news of this. So that's saying something that just because it came out of the creator's hands, the price improves.

      [00:03:25] Yeah, we'll definitely be able to dig into that a bit. And we have some other news from the Coinbase NFT marketplace to wait for it launch exactly on Soon. 

      [00:03:36] Soon. That's what we get. Oh, come on. I thought we had real news here, George.

      [00:03:41] as bad as the people with as click baity title saying. 

      [00:03:45] So actually we do have some Coinbase news. They are adding support for Solana Coinbase wallet does adding support for Solano, which I think is actually fairly notable Solano hasn't hasn't always been. Fully embraced by a lot of the crypto community, but I think this will obviously give a lot more people access to it, to use it in on marketplaces.

      [00:04:07] The FTX NFT marketplace has been very active in this will make it easier for the people that hold Coinbase funds to go use them on FTX and Solano.

      [00:04:16] Yeah, I, more the merrier and especially on a platform like Coinbase, which makes it easy to move money back and forth and across that's all well and good. And they'll just increase the size of the market. Hopefully we also have in here a little Spotify informations and that they may be getting into a metaverse play.

      [00:04:37] What is that? 

      [00:04:37] Yeah, that's a good question. It sounds like it's been a lot, or there's been a lot of NFT talk at south by Southwest. And Zuckerberg took took the stage at one point and mentioned that NFTs are coming soon to Instagram. We don't have a date, but it sounds like they will be able to, or they're going to offer you a minting option.

      [00:04:55] So it will be a. Real NFT marketplace of sorts. Sounds like they're going to call them digital collectibles. I think that's a good move to get away from the NFT name. It's it doesn't have the best reputation as is, and it isn't the easiest to say necessarily.

      [00:05:10] Yeah.

      [00:05:11] I think rebranding, it might as well call it whatever you want. If it's on chain and we can. Transfer it and buy it and sell it. And it gets more people playing with the medium. That's awesome. Now, call it hats on cats for all I care, but I like the Spotify getting into it. Cause that's that music angle that we've been seeing more and more of and helping artists hopefully monetize more effectively their work like this.

      [00:05:35] And 

      [00:05:36] I'm sorry, did you actually mention the Spotify news? And I talked about Instagram being there. I think that's what I may have just done. And anyway, they're both getting into it, but I think the Spotify it'll be interesting to see how they actually use NFTs. I noticed recently that somewhat related news move Snoop dog took down a few of the death row records from streaming services like Spotify.

      [00:06:01] And there was news recently to get Botts death row records and is planning to attorney turn it into a metaverse record label. We'll see how that plays out. But Spotify is also seeing that maybe they need to make some moves before creators want to just take it on themselves to do it and not give it to a platform like Spotify.

      [00:06:17] That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, I think he was able to turn out a tiny profit of a hundred Ethan sales based on one of the recent record album drops that he had. People are taking note and that means people have to move very fast. I think that is a definite takeaway here.

      [00:06:34] One of the reasons we are seeing south by Southwest, a very arguably most popular trend setting technology and innovation, marketing and music film, also conference that happens in Austin, Texas every year, being dominated by an FTS is the fact that with this new tech consider for a moment what if, Microsoft suddenly was appended by a company that just started making computers last year.

      [00:06:58] Think about the fact that you go labs didn't exist and where you had the incumbent larva labs already operating since 2017 had a, a huge advantage and relatively speaking within short order of 12 months, less than that, boom you're purchased. This is a weird. It's very exciting. It's very interesting.

      [00:07:16] Should we move into, to the affordable project though? Andrew?

      [00:07:18] Yeah, it sounds like you've got one here for us today, George.

      [00:07:21] So I've been feeling a little guilty. I was down last week, just in general, my portfolio. I just felt like I wasn't bringing the heat. So I have done some digging and I think we've got some gems this week, but I'm to, I'm going hit it hard right off the bat with human. Human park.io is something I've been watching for a little bit.

      [00:07:41] It's coming out of the, our friends that Zed at Zed run. As I'm a avid collector and it basically, they are a docs team. It's virtually human studios that has created it. Human. As by their description in the white paper, where everyone can truly explore their identity, human park, easy next gen web three experience platform combines community construction of the metaverse could become an explore the very next level of human interaction.

      [00:08:09] Basically they've got these nudes spelled N O D nudes, and it is a sort of full 3d figure that lets you explore. Cool your identity. Each one is like a blank canvas. And so the mint is coming now. There've been doing it in various ways, but there'll be opening up to the public. The mint fee is said to be essentially just the cost of minting.

      [00:08:32] Based on what I've read online the original news will be originals and I'll carry that title. And it seems as though they're going to be true avatars for exploring a space. Now there is. Tech that you download an actual application and I've gone through this process, download the application, and then you can literally just throw up a whole bunch of decorative tattoos on this very realistic looking and breathing nude.

      [00:08:57] And it can be either a type a or type B, but it's an, it's a male archetype or female. Image, and it's very impressive tech. I would say I played with the pixel Mon. It is the exact opposite of what pixel minded people in terms of does the thing work. And so it's interesting and there is a lot of work that's gone into it and they've been clearly.

      [00:09:18] Doing a lot of work on it. It's a little weird when you look at it at first. Cause it's like faceless avatars that move around and you can begin to see what they're starting to do. A, what do you see on this one, Andrew? 

      [00:09:29] Yeah. So I'm actually trying to download the configure what they call the configurator right now, or I am downloading it and playing with it. I have been following this for a bit. I hadn't had a chance to actually try the the download here. I see it is available for both PCs and apple machines right off the bat.

      [00:09:48] So I think that is a plus And as you mentioned, we were talking about this a little bit just before we started recording gear. And you mentioned that the graphics are. They're really good. It's a lot of details. So it's a, it's interesting when you're creating these that you'd see a lot of detail here.

      [00:10:03] I'm opening this up now. So I, the discord seems like they've been very active there. They have, they post updates often. Maybe they get too many of them, but I see that they're very active in, they're definitely working on this. It sounds like the. The mint, there's a good opportunity to actually mint when they become available and, and I think that's one of the good things about the market right now is that it's a little bit quieter.

      [00:10:24] You don't have to to necessarily pay ridiculous gas fees to look, once in a while, they'll still be things catching on like that. So we don't know. We have an actual date on the the mid yet George.

      [00:10:34] It's a good question. I think they extended it. Certainly next week, it looks like. And because one of the things is after you've designed your your nude it locks in at a certain point, cause it's connected with your wallet. So careful as you're designing. And I don't want you to get locked in with something you don't like.

      [00:10:50] Again, it's related, it's the same project inside of the human studios that Zed is associated with. And. It's going, it's very early and this is a team that builds for the longterm. So it gives me a little bit of comfort in that, like it's not one and done. And if they if the probability of a rug bull is very low because of its association with such an established project and the exact vacs team, and it's not entirely clear how these things are going to use, but they have plans and they have some really cool looking texts.

      [00:11:19] So who knows there's going to be. Blended experience. They talk about like battle Royale and free roaming and like roadblocks and Minecraft esque type of activities. So there's a lot out there. And it's super early and I like bringing things that are early and fordable so take a look and we'll continue to share ideas and what's happening.

      [00:11:39] But again, not financial advice, I'm talking about new data guitars in the metaverse. Catch it with all due financial information and respect as possible. 

      [00:11:47] All right. Thank you for bringing that one. George. I think we can move on to our topic today does create a reputation dictate value, and we have. Hinted at the topic a bit, discussed it a little in relation to UGA labs and larva labs and how their reputations have certainly gone different ways this past year.

      [00:12:08] And it's it's really resulted in a big win for you. The labs. What's your take on this overall George.

      [00:12:15] It really struck me because I saw it once saw twice or three times where in the news, there was a story of a founder or a team doing something that pissed off the community because it violated. The sense of justice, right? Humans are a justice oriented social creature, and we can see this, find this and track this quite easily on the blockchain, which just means if you screw over somebody in the community, if you screw over a past project, screw a past, partner, if you do something that just violates our social sense of right and wrong, there is this. Immutable inevitable human reactions, social reaction, community response of punishment. It's like in our hard wiring. And I just was in all watching that certainly w how angry I was with larva labs. I don't know no punk. I don't, I used to own a need it, but, obviously I sold way too early on that.

      [00:13:13] And I was pissed. I was pissed that day over at larva labs sold an O G thing just as a money grab. And, we covered that in the past episode, in it started to you realize potentially undo the brand value and drop the potential equity of people that are holding it. Despite the fact that they were literally the, the original enters the creators of Ponce, like all you had to do is sit there and not, don't be eating.

      [00:13:40] And somehow I think that really, we have some other stories in here, but yes, the answer to the theme is yes. Does the creator reputation dictate value? Absolutely. that's where my head's at on this. 

      [00:13:51] I agree. And I think we've talked about. In different ways in the past, we've talked some about how your NFTs and really your enough key, because it can be changed by the creators or the project developers at any point. And that is true for a lot of NFTs and there is something to you've gotta be able to trust that team.

      [00:14:08] That's leading the project. And if. I trust them to lead the project, those things, aren't going to be worth that much anyway, and so we've seen, I think in relation to that, even we've seen larva labs put their punks on chain and that didn't do much for the price. I don't think that is as important as a lot of people make it out to be it's important, but it's not the be all end all.

      [00:14:31] I don't think that. I think it would be at a bigger risk if all of the punk images somehow are gone even from IPFS. And are we even everywhere that they are backed up? I think there's probably a bigger issue than whether it's on chain or not. Punks are certainly one of the ones that you would think would have the most security in terms of there being image or records of these images.

      [00:14:53] So I think we're always at risk of. Of what the project creator, the really dictating the value of the project.

      [00:15:01] Yeah. And then the other thing you saw the UGA labs team doing immediately. Was giving, I guess it's the licensing rights, the creative rights to the owners of punks for the images, the NFTs that they hold, they had just immediately did it overnight, as soon as they grabbed it, which again is another big signal to the community that like, this is the right way to play. 

      [00:15:22] Yeah, it seems like that is holding a lot of value, right? I think you can be, it can be debated how much value that has when there are, 10,000 copies of that, but people want it. And the thing is the creators still have rights to plenty of images assuming they hold pieces from this. So I think that's a really smart move.

      [00:15:39] It seemed to be something. Drawing a lot of controversy, some from some of the big punk holders that, notably sold because of the IP issues and, there's really no reason. Those were some of the biggest supporters, the people that were on social media, talking the most about punks that sometimes, and they certainly helped increase the exposure and the value of punks.

      [00:15:59] So to not just give them what they were saying is this, the standard in. What should be the standard and NFTs. And they were looking at larva labs to, to lead the NFT community into this space and, or, in this space and say, no, this is the right way. You should give people the creative license to do what they want with their image, because that's what the people want.

      [00:16:18] And that. This is going to that's what the market's going to value as well. And Ecolab saw that and they did it right away and, then they came out with the the ape token and I'm sure that they've realized that having that. So I should say that. The anybody that's holding a punk or me that did not get any of the AP token.

      [00:16:35] Those were for just board apes and the derivatives there. But I still think it was a great move to just show that they are still giving value to their community. I don't think that it could be expected that these holders, that they have, the ID that they just acquired in the same week, we would get that airdrop.

      [00:16:50] But regardless, like I said, it's something that shows how much value they give back to their community. And it wasn't asking them to go buy another. For two and a half eith or, after they gave or giving half of it away, just a very different model, a very different way to, to handle the community from the two creators here.

      [00:17:06] Yeah, Carefully. I did look at the eight token and I was looking, scouring around for affordable projects. Just be careful if you have the FOMO and feel like, oh, here's the chance I can buy this token. Just historically consider what has happened when tokens have been dropped in mass to a bunch of people for free and whether or not they're all in on holding it indefinitely versus taking some.

      [00:17:30] Inevitably I can't find a counterexample to what I'm going to say, tokens that are dropped in this way. Initially see a price drop because of the profit taking. So be careful with running, running directly in this direction and just throwing money at this, trying to follow into it.

      [00:17:47] So I will say that there though it is, I'm super excited. Also on the sort of punk train here, punk comics fell off an absolute cliff December. They literally go. And I looked back, trading average floors of over five E on punk comics to. Currently, well under, like it's like 0.1, right?

      [00:18:11] They fall off a cliff because of the reputational reveal and sort of identity of beanie coming out that in fact the individual behind. Punk comics was called out by NFT ethics among others to actually have been part of certain pump and dumps and other things where he was taking advantage of investors.

      [00:18:34] And it just it torched it, it torched the project overnight, simply because of his role as founder.

      [00:18:40] Yeah, that's a good example there. That was when he was always somewhat of a, it's always been somewhat of a controversial figure on social media. Had certainly. Ben in his share of Twitter arguments and people were, I dunno, maybe looking for something on him anyway, and, turns out that he had a lot more dirt on him and yet you're right.

      [00:18:57] That completely destroyed the value of that. Pretty quickly too. And we've seen this in other projects, we S some lesser known projects. Also see, we discussed one with some. The magic internet money and some related projects there at one point with Sifu, with a developer who had been part of a previous crypto scam that saw a hundred and some odd million dollars disappear.

      [00:19:20] And then it was turned out that he was connected to this. I also recall there was one out from the magic marketplace where a developer there was linked to some other scammy and Ft project. Ben had death and proven to take quite a bit of money from there. And the token dropped initially I think 20, 30%.

      [00:19:39] It did recover. They eventually had another hack that caused other issues there, but that's of course that's another topic that we have. Talked about in a funny times in the past. But yeah, we see this again and again, where there aren't, especially when so much of the project depends on one or two people being part of it that, if they, if there's something wrong or if they leave the project even, it really can hurt the value of the NFT that the token, whatever it may be really quickly.

      [00:20:02] Yeah, I think there's a unique, there's a unique difference between leaving a project versus the reputation ruined aspect, which is just immediately reflected in price. But also, I don't think I've always fully maybe mapped to the risk of NFTs that you're really betting on this creator in a. Memorials social way that I think just adds a bit of risk to an already risky ASCA asset. 

      [00:20:30] Absolutely. We've talked a bit, not on the podcast. I don't believe we talked a bit about how artists are, especially at risk when you're holding their pieces, because that is literally one person in most cases. And we've got one person, They think person and, doing things, that, anybody's doing they're, they are capable of ruining a reputation, which could destroy the value.

      [00:20:51] You don't know what's going to happen regardless of whether the person is doxed or not. You've really don't eat no at any point what their future may hold and what the value of their pieces may do as a result.

      [00:21:02] Yeah.

      [00:21:03] the art defines the artists and that interpretation, it's. In a more intimate way. It feels like then maybe in the past where, like artists have been known to be a-holes, but they're like, oh, I respect the work. And you can identify the work separate of the artist and the artists and 10 you're like okay.

      [00:21:19] Nothing comes to mind. I don't like throwing stones that way, but it's certainly true. But it is maybe a different way because we're such a community. Oriented and the way the value is ascribed and able to be done so quickly that it's just a higher expectation and maybe a new threshold to take a look at.

      [00:21:37] When you say like, all right, here is the team capital T behind this, do they know what they're doing? Are they good at what they're doing? Are they trustworthy? Would they make the right moral decision? Especially look, people get a little baddy sometimes when they get a bunch of money in their pocket. Okay. How are you going to respond? If this suddenly starts to like, take off, are you going to realize oh, we have $70 million and we drummed, we dropped a bunch of shit on people. Pixel Mon what are we going to do to fix this? Or should we just take this money? Cause that's a lot of freaking. 

      [00:22:09] Yeah, that's a good point. That's a tough one to come back from as well. That picks them on case when the reputation is destroyed like that, it takes a lot to try to come back and they certainly I don't know, maybe they're trying, but it doesn't seem like they're trying hard if they haven't completely rubbed everybody at this 

      [00:22:26] haven't seen anything in the news. I haven't seen any updates. And it's a lifetime to repair and a data room. That's the brutal thing about reputation. 

      [00:22:33] Yeah. That's a great.

      [00:22:34] All right. I think we covered this one. Interesting topic. Thanks for bringing us news, Andrew and good luck playing with your nude. 

      [00:22:41] Oh,