Rebels | NFT Strategies Talk In 2023

Video Transcript:

Alduin: Hello to our guest! While we are waiting, if you would like to share with your friends some NFT strategies, we have an amazing guest today. Please don’t hesitate to share this Twitter space with them. And of course, we would like to mention that this is happening every week. We try every week to host Twitter spaces and have NFT strategies as our topics and invite special guests, of course. So, if you’d like to know more about it, follow us on Twitter and share this Twitter space. We will just wait for more and our guest speaker. So, hello again! I see that our guest is already here. And so, to start off, of course, GM (Good Morning) or good afternoon or good evening to everyone, or good day to wherever you are.

Chris: They good day, so welcome to everyone who’s here right now. Yeah, and I see Big Bad Wolf or speaker, it’s already here.

Wolf: Yeah, I’m not able to unmute my mic. I don’t know if you guys can hear me or not, but…

Chris: Yeah, we can hear you.

Wolf: Oh wow, that is so annoying because on my phone, it’s showing this mic is off.

Chris: Maybe the usual, you know, the usual leaders. Facebook, yeah? So yeah, go ahead. Anyway, I’ll do it.

Wolf: I’m good, so yeah, trying to give me, give me one sec. Sorry, I’m trying to mute the mic, just so I know, like, you know, it’s still working. Give me one second, right?

Alduin: All right, so before we wait for Big Bad Wolf, welcome to our Twitter Spaces where we talk about NFT strategies weekly. We try to host Twitter Spaces every week, where we also invite some special guests for you. So, if you would like to know more about NFT strategies, of course, follow us and be updated on all of that. And so, what can you expect for this Twitter Space? Actually, first off, don’t be shy. If you’re good, give us some likes, give us some reactions out there. Don’t be shy to comment. We can actually see them; we can read them for you. And later on, we’ll have Q&A where we will be hearing from you guys as well. And of course, if you have friends who would like to know more about NFT strategies, please share this with your space. This could be for founders or this could be for just NFT enthusiasts themselves. And so, yeah, I do have my co-host here as well, Barbacusi. Why don’t you introduce yourself?

Chris: Hello, hello, guys! Welcome, GMGM, and good, good evening to some others who are on the other part of the world. So, my name is Chris, AKA Barbacoa. I’m the community lead for TokenMinds and happy to be here, guys.

Alduin: And I actually forgot to mention who I am. I’m Alduin, your host. Hello, sorry, can you hear me? I think I have, yeah, okay, I have problems with my mic as well. So I’m all done. I’m a marketing executive here at TokenMinds, and we are a creative engineering company. So if ever you’re looking into blockchain development, NFT marketing, crypto marketing, and all that within the web3 space, you can check us out, more especially on our website tokenminds.co. So, if yeah, you can check us out over there. Now, we’re just trying to get a big bad wolf to accept the invite.

Chris: Yep, so while waiting, guys, you can actually share this with—I mean, it is Twitter Space—with your network, so they will know more about Rebels. And then, since Rebels is one of the big names in space right now, they will be sharing their experiences, their strategies in this session. And maybe we can hear some Alpha, who knows, right?

Alduin: Yeah, who knows? And I see that the mic works already, so to start off for our special guest from Rebels, can you quickly introduce yourself and tell us what exactly it is you do for Rebels?

Wolf: Yeah, no. Absolutely finally got it to work. Thank you once again. It’s an honor, a pleasure to come on stage with you guys. Thank you for the invite. So, my name is Big Bad Wolf. That’s the alias I use. You can call me Wolf. In real life, I work as a technology architect for a large agritech company in the United States, the largest agritech company in the world and in the United States. So, I got into cryptos or I’ve been into crypto since around the end of 2016. I got to experience the 2017 Bull Run, also the crash of and then the bear market of 19 and 20. And I was aware of NFTs all the way back from like Crypto Kitties and even before that. I even traded, I bought one and sold a Crypto Kitty at a loss. But, like, that was my extent of exposure for NFTs up until around 2021. That’s when I really started looking at it. I, being a technology architect, my outlook towards any new tech that comes across, whether it’s web3 or web2, is to evaluate how does this fit in the larger ecosystem of, you know, application suites that are currently used by corporations, by consumers, B2B, B2C, use cases, and stuff like that, right? So, it’s a very analytical, fun, you know, outlook towards new technology. And I’ve used the same outlook towards NFTs as well. My first, I think, NFT I ever bought was an AI NFT from Claire Silver. She’s an excellent artist. It was through Braindrops, and that was the first NFT that I actually minted. And then, that’s kind of went down the rabbit hole of, you know, PFP NFTs and what’s out there. Started looking at Doodles, Baysie, Macey, realized, you know, those are really out of my league. But then, there were a lot of projects kind of popping up during that time. And Rebels was one of those projects. I think we launched the Discord January 22, believe, or end of January 22. I think it was the 25th or 26th of January. I was the first guy to join the Discord. I started my journey with Rebels as a language mark. So, I’m originally from India, so I speak multiple languages. But that’s how I started my journey with Rebels. But then, pretty soon, I realized that this was not a project like all the other projects that were popping up. The founders were established, experienced docs, builders in the web2 space, and had significant expertise and experience in the web3 space. I don’t know if you guys are aware, but Nas recently left his job as the chief security officer of AZ Crypto, which is the crypto wing for Anderson Hurwitz, which is the largest or one of the largest venture capitalist firms in the United States. So, he’s extremely well-versed with blockchain tech, blockchain security, and one of his personal, I would say, the reason why he founded, and he says he founded Rebels, was because he was unable to find a PFP solution that he could use. So, he wanted something that he could use, and that was the biggest, I think, driver for him to launch this project. But, so, when it comes to me, I currently am part of the core team. I was recently inducted into the department, to the core team. I wear multiple hats for the project, so I do a little bit of community management. I do a lot of the outreach, collabs, and getting the rebels’ name, you know, out there. And I’m also responsible for product management now. So, the product that we’re building within Rebels, I am working with the devs, working with the team behind the scenes to make sure that we achieve our goals. So, I know it was a long spiel, but I wanted to make sure everyone understood where, when I went, background, and what I currently do.

Alduin: Yeah, that’s really interesting, and it actually sounds heavy: your full-time job and your rep G job. So, for those aspiring projects, I’d like to actually ask, and I’m curious, how do you manage your full-time job as well as your web3 life?

Wolf: That’s a good question. Full-time, I think it depends on what your full-time job is. I am in my current role as the technology architect, fairly hands-free in the sense that I don’t need to sit down, and so I’m not an individual contributor. I’m not, you know, I don’t have to deliver anything specific on a daily basis for my job, and certainly, it leaves me a lot of open time and free time outside of my work hours. So, what I’m saying is my work-life balance is pretty good. I’m at a level where my workload balance is pretty good, so I can actually dedicate time towards that. This may not be the reality for everyone, but I think it finally comes down to three things, right? You have to be really good at managing your workload, you have to be able to say no to things that you don’t want to do, and you have to absolutely understand stuff that you have to do. So, you have to be able to manage that workload and find balance pretty well. You also have to, in my opinion, be really good at prioritizing your work. So, okay, you have, you know, 10 things to do during the day, you need to know what needs to get done when so that you can do it well. And three, I think you have to have the drive. My hours are like, I wake up at six in the morning. That’s when my day starts. The first thing I do is drop a GM on Twitter, check out Discord, and anything that was, you know, I need to do tasks on the web3 side. My day job starts around 7:30 o’clock, which is when I start focusing on that. And then after 5 PM, I’m again on my web3 life. So, that’s how I kind of juggle. And then Saturday, Sunday, weekends, of course, I’m fully web3.

Alduin: Yeah, and I agree with you on that, on how to manage everything. So now, let’s get into the thick of it. And for our wonderful listeners, and of course, for those who don’t know, can you tell us more about Rebels?

Wolf: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I know I see a few Rebels, a couple of rebels in here. Mr. Neff has a Rebels; he’s got a psychedelics PFE, but I think I see, perhaps, he’s got a Rebels pfp. I see SixGod; he’s got a Rebels pfp at its core, right? Rebels is a software product with a JPEG attached to it and so the core of an NFT. So, I have to be tweeting about this; I’ve been talking about this. This is in line with what the founder’s vision is as well. When I said initially that this is why Fanatos wanted to launch a product, it was that the pfp product that we use today, whether it’s on Twitter, whether it’s on Discord, any other digital or metaverse use case, it is broken as it is today; it’s very, it’s extremely limited in what it can do. It’s a picture. So, to give you an example, I want to represent the fact that I have a pretty red seal, but I also want to represent that I’m a Rebels Maxi, like I hold quite a lot of rebels. And so, how do I do that through my profile picture? What kind of social signaling abilities do today’s NFTs provide in terms of being able to say that we represent multiple communities or even sub-communities within a community? So, for example, to give you an example, you have the golden fur, it could be a sub-community within the Board Apes, and so I may want to have a Board Ape that I like, which is not a golden fur, but I also want to represent that I’m part of the golden fur sub-community within. So, you don’t have a software product; you don’t have a pfp product out there that’s able to do those kinds of multi or multi-community or multi-group social signaling. And that’s the product that I think Rebels is trying to tackle through a customizable NFT, wherein you’re able to add certain patches or other details to your NFT, update the metadata in a way where you’re able to signal participation in these multiple communities and sub-communities, but it’s all on-chain, right? It’s all verified on-chain. It’s not as simple as Photoshop, and anyone can go like that’s the current product right now is basically people downloading their different pfp jpegs and putting something together through Photoshop or some other software and then using that or banners. Like people have gotten creative through banners, but it doesn’t tell me if you really own the stuff. And if you’re going to change the pfp in any kind of way, you’re not going to be able to have the hexagonal NFT pfp because obviously, it’s not part of any contract because you have done it at home. And so, the product that Rebels is putting together is something that is on-chain verifiable, that is cohesive in the way it is put together so it’s not PNG and PNG; it’s not half as it should not lose the quality of the image itself while you’re doing that and all that stuff. So, that’s the product we’re both building behind the scenes. I hope I answered that question.

Chris: Yeah, sounds good actually. And I just have an additional question right after that. So, with this world of web3 tree, right, and NFTs, right, there are different projects, and almost the majority of the projects have been like just a derivative of the other. For example, with this being said, what do you think actually sets Rainbow apart? How is what do you think sets Rebels apart? I mean within the web3 space and then.

Wolf:  Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

Chris: Yeah, and then if you can share any strategies that you can share with our listeners who also, because there are some listeners here who may be trying to make their own project, right? So, any strategies you can also share on how you actually came up with this and how you actually did these things to be unique in the space? Yeah.

Wolf: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m going to start pinning some of the tweets from the Rebels account just to give people an idea of the artwork and the customization and stuff that’s happening behind the scenes. You’ll see that it’s extremely unique in how it’s set up. You’re not, this is not plagiarized art; this is original art. We’re not copying anything. I haven’t seen anything out there that, I mean, there are a few copies of Rebels that we have recently come to light, but Rebels itself is extremely unique in its art, right? And I think what I, when I explained the product earlier, that’s what sets us apart further, is the ability to look at this as a software product and not as an art-driven community, you know? I would say, even though the art is top-notch, the way the founders look at this is more in line with the software product—a product with features that can be added through customizations. We’ve talked about so many different things that’s possible with Rebels’ PFP, using the PFP as a means to interact with the five products, as a means to interact with other products in the like, whether metaverse products or non-metaverse products, but digital products especially. We’ve talked about interactive entities where you can hover over the NFT, and it basically—and these are not any of the roadmap items—this is kind of, you know, the vision of the founders. The vision is that if you start looking at the PFP as a product, then you can start thinking about what are the different requirements within this space today or for tomorrow, and you can start building the infrastructure layer for that. So, well, what sets us apart again, to make it a little bit more or to explain it a little bit more, is that we’re a PFP project, a PFP NFT project where we are leveraging customization and the technology to build the infrastructure that will support the future use cases for custom NFTs. That’s kind of how you look at it. So, if you look at, there’s a bunch of customizable entities out there, right? Doodles come up with something, Psychedelics Anonymous obviously has a customizable, they’ve already launched their product called New Dawn, but their customizations are going towards within the ecosystem. Their customizations are, I would say, within the trade economy of that project. Rebels has no such limitations because if you can build a PFP of, sorry, if you have an NFT of Doodles like I do, you can actually have a Doodles patch on top of your Rebels NFT, and the Rebels NFT, before I can even apply the patch or check if I actually own the digital asset that I’m applying the patch for, so if I own the Doodles, it should be in the same wallet that I’m applying the patch to the Rebels NFT, so it’s on-chain verifiable, and it’s basically allowing you to represent the ability to, yeah, sorry, they’re allowing you to represent being part of multiple communities. It’s, in my opinion, there’s no other project out there that is kind of taking the technology infrastructure approach, and that’s where I think Rebels is different.

Chris: I see, that’s really nice to hear, actually. So, like in other projects, right, there are more, okay, just this NFT, and then it’s just a photo, basically. But here, we actually have something to be used as a tool, as a platform that is more than the NFT itself. So, I really think that’s a cool way and a unique way to distinguish yourself as a project amongst the others who are in the workplace space right now. But yeah, I’m also observing a lot of different changes in the NFT space right now personally, right? So, we have more utilities coming in, etc., since it’s a bear market. So, the more unique you are, the better. It seems that there is more adoption for your project. So, how do you actually think with what’s currently going on? How do you think NFTs are going to move forward? And then with that insight as well, related to that insight, do you have any specific strategies that you see would be really effective in the upcoming times as a project?

Wolf: Before we move forward and I answer that question, I just want to say, “Nice!” Our founder is also in the audience, so if you want to come up and talk, feel free to. If you need to request that, but I think from a strategy point of view, our strategy has a fairly simple right. Like, we’re not in the business of, you know, following in the footsteps of every new meta. We have a very dedicated vision statement that we’ve created, and we’re going to stick to that and deliver on that vision statement, which comes down to, you know, your customizable NFT or custom entities through building the tech infrastructure for custom NFTs. And beyond that, I feel like it’s—you have to also always take into consideration where the market is—the macro market, not just the NFT space. Where are we headed in terms of the overall market? What kind of a bear market is it going to be? How long is the bear market going to be there? Because treasury management or managing what you have and being able to build through that is just as important. So, I think from a strategy point of view, we are keeping it very simple: prioritize what we want to put our efforts and resources at, be extremely cautious in terms of how we are communicating and what we’re communicating to make sure we’re not misleading or overpromising and underdelivering. And then, last but not least, deliver on what you promised and try to overdeliver on what you’ve already promised. So, our most recent slew of tweets, if you see, or something that Nasta comes up where we were able to do 3D customizations, where people were submitting their existing Rebels, and we were able to make certain changes in their backgrounds and color palettes and stuff like that and showcasing what 3D customization, which I don’t think anyone’s ever done. You won’t find that in the space just because it’s that hard to do, and it takes a lot of resources to do it. But just to showcase what’s possible in the future, but our focus is right now on delivering on the patches that we have. I think I’ve pinned the tweet for the patches. That’s the simplest way I can put it in terms of our strategy: not overcomplicating things, delivering what we decided we were going to deliver, communicating enough but not overcommunicating to generate hype because you’re not a hype-driven project. And the community is everything for us. It’s all about making sure that the Rebels holders get that sense that there’s a team that cares about them. So, I think that’s the way I can summarize the strategy. If you wanna…

Chris: Yeah, I invited Nas just in case he wants to speak, but if not, it’s still fine. Yeah, welcome founder. Yeah, welcome Nas. 

Nas:Hey guys, it was good to talk to you guys.

Chris: How are you? Yeah, pleasure to speak with you, sir. And any specific strategies to share? Yeah, so we’re just talking about, you know, what is the thought of Wolf with regards to NFTs going forward? And then, what is the approach of your team or strategy of your team for your project that you’ll be seeing? That would be an effective strategy for this upcoming time. Yeah.

Nas: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been pretty vocal about this. Like, I’ve been, you know, extremely deep in the empty space for quite a bit of time, especially on all things, kind of, you know, technology and infrastructure. And at the end of the day, as Will pointed out, I think that like this space will need a lot more just infrastructure and software wins. At the end of the day, because software is, you know, the backbone of the future experiences. And one thing that I’m a big fan of personally is trying to come up with metrics for, like, the space metrics of success. For us to understand, all together, what does it mean to succeed as a space? And really, I do believe that, as you were saying, you know, the vast majority of the time, a lot of people will focus on, you know, like static images. Whereas, I do strongly believe that, at the end of the day, like digital goods should evolve just like physical goods, right? Like, when I’m at my phone, I have my laptop, I can update them. They can change, you know, colors over time. They can have more features and so on. And so, I don’t see why, like, purely digital goods and assets and products should not be the exact same, right? And so, from that standpoint, if you start thinking about digital goods as kind of analogous to physical goods, there’s, you know, one of the things that we should try to think through is how many times, essentially, is what is the ratio between the usage of the NFT and the times that it’s sold? Can you imagine if, like, people were just buying t-shirts to sell them right away and just, like, no one would ever wear them? Or, you know, similarly with iPhones, just going to the App Store and the first thing that they do after buying it is just, like, reselling it right away? And no one would actually care about using them? And so, that’s really, I think, what we have all together as a space to come together and just make NFTs usable. Because so long as they’re not usable, the only thing that is remaining is, you know, kind of speculation. And that helps draw attention to the space and some capital. But at the end of the day, that’s not what’s gonna make us succeed, right? Like, we can’t live in a world where people just buy things to resell them. That doesn’t make any sense. We have to start building things that will actually be used and actually be sold on an ongoing basis. You know, like when you download an app, you have in-app purchases. And if you want to unlock additional features, you have to pay for it, right? And so, I’m really looking forward to a space that evolves into usable NFTs rather than just held and collected NFTs.

Chris: Yeah, I like that, since you are building something that is really useful. So if I were a buyer of this NFT, for example, and I’m actually planning to use it, I’ll be holding it for the long term rather than, you know, I agree with that, rather than the usual hype projects with only PFPS. You know, we will just flip it, right? But if it has an actual use, I agree with you. I’ll keep it and keep things moving as I utilize this. It’s really good and going more over to some of the strategies and your experiences as project founders. Since also our founder is here, right? So, I would like to ask, actually, have you also encountered, you know, big hurdles within the span of operating levels? And how do you actually overcome these obstacles? So, you can share insights or listeners, especially for those who are struggling currently in their projects or those who would just like to know more.

Nas: Yeah, honestly, that is an amazing question. I think that it’s actually very rare for people to ask me, like, what kind of, you know, issues did I run into? And I’m gonna be honest, and I think that, like, well, it’s funny because, like, Wolf started as, you know, kind of a moderator as part of the team and then kind of, like, climbed the ranks and then, you know, became a mod and then kind of, you know, helping us now, very deeply, as part of the team and, you know, as part of Partnerships and other things. And you probably are starting to see more and more of those, Wolf. I can’t have, like, you know, that the reality is actually often times a big pain in the ass. And I think that, you know, it is very hard to see that, and, you know, as a business, like, our role in as a project, our role is to try to keep things positive, right? Like, in kind of hiding a lot of those negative things that are happening behind the scenes, but they actually do, right? Just like anywhere, and especially in our space, which is going at, like, you know, 700 miles an hour and really doesn’t have any equivalent anywhere, right? So, I do believe that, you know, there were a lot of things that were immense hurdles. At the end of the day, you know, I myself had no idea about how to best, you know, build communities. And, do you think that we should? We took a certain approach and actually tended to work well. But, on the, for example, on the art side, you know, a lot of people will find the art of Rebel, you know, absolutely wonderful. And, and part of these people, the flip side of it is that, you know, it does cost a lot of money. It does. It does take an immense amount of time. Every single bug, as you can imagine, something in 3D is actually, you know, it means that, like, every single kind of combination of your asset in 3D has to perfectly work with the right light and the right kind of, you know, kind of physics and how intertwined, you know, each asset is. And so, the complexity for 3D art is much bigger than that I’ve had realized, essentially. So, you know, we had essentially a team of 12 people working relentlessly for about, I believe, like, close to seven months on the collection, like, seven days a week, essentially. And so, obviously, that costs a lot of money. That is, you know, we essentially took a lot of time. And often times, people will say too much time, right? And, at the end of the day, you know, this is one of the many things that, you know, it is pretty hard to accept as a decision. Sometimes I’m wondering, like, was it the right choice? Maybe should I have, you know, started a project that was, you know, 3D-oriented and actually a lot cheaper to produce and, like, give us a lot more breathing room from a financial perspective on the rest? And then also, you know, we essentially took the hard part because, as Wolf mentioned, we’re very deep on and extremely big on customization, right? And as you can imagine, customization for 3D is immensely hard, you know, immensely harder compared to customization for 2D, right? And so, that’s the part where we actually—you know—there may have been like a lot of things I would have done differently. Separately, obviously operating a business in general is very hard, and I think that anyone who has built a business just understands that. At the same time, we’re in a space that actually expects projects to deliver things at a rate that is absolutely—you know—insane. When, at the end of the day, people—you know—when you build a business, you have to create a legal entity, you have to operate various different things, especially if you’re bidding infrastructure. You have to—you know—have like a software development life cycle, that means having—you know—kind of like infrastructure in place and continuous integration and CI. You need to have—like testing, you need to have—you know—kind of like local testing, infrastructure testing, and integration testing into release. Then, you need to maintain. There are bugs—you know—and there are just like so many things that, whenever you build—you know—just infrastructure, takes a lot of time. And this is why—you know—companies that are, like, in the tech space just don’t release things that often—you know. And despite having a massive influx of—you know—venture capital-backed or other types of—you know—depth of funding and debt-based funding and other mechanisms to kind of like raise—raise capital. And yeah, I—I strongly do believe that like there is first the part on kind of overcoming hurdles while operating Rebels—you know—the art, we—we took the hardest solution and we made it extremely hard on ourselves. And second was probably just operating a business where—you know—you have to do everything at the speed of light, you have to learn at the speed of light because like I did—I never had built a business myself before. I helped others do it, but like they didn’t do it myself. So yeah, I think that there is just like a lot of—you know—a lot of things. And then, personally, I think that having, as I mentioned, because of like the 3D arts and like things just costing a lot more than I had anticipated, I just ended up working for like over a year—or—you know—it’s volunteering—you know—it’s pretty much like I didn’t make any bucks. And I’ve been actually—you know—buying myself like probably for like twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Rebels and night cards and—and had been—you know—handing over and giving away most of my own as part of giveaways, etc. So, you know, it is—it is pretty hard. And I think that, like, a lot of people need to adjust their expectations. A bunch of people are going to want to get rich, etc. I always said from the beginning, Rebels is not going to be that project, but like we really want to make people—you know—people’s NFTs usable. And so, we’re—we’re going to continue working towards that and—and yeah, again—you know—I—I—I don’t like that much just like working for free non-stop, and I have like a very limited amount of time, especially because I just started my own company. But, you know, I’m—I’m always going to be there for—for the—for the—for the community. This morning, again, I was doing a podcast—you know—with—with one great community member. And however, again, I will always help push—you know—people in the community. That’s—that’s really something that I will strive for forever.

Chris: And I hear you. I hear you. I honestly also really like your art and look where Rebels is now. And I also hope that for more hurdles, whenever, or I hope there’s no hurdles, but I hope you get over them as well in the future. And so now, looking at the market itself and a broader view, and of course, for people who have been in the NFT space for quite some time, from your observations, like looking at it on a scale, looking at previous strategies first, what are those strategies for NFT projects that will no longer work? What are previous strategies that no longer work and new ones that do work in current times? And what are new strategies that you observe will be working or are working right now, especially in the market?

Nas: Yeah, I’m probably like the worst person to ask this because, like, I don’t follow whatsoever, like, anything in the NFT space, and like, everyone in the audience can vouch for this, I suck. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m just like constantly on my Twitter DMs, just like joking with people. But like, I actually don’t follow that much that closely, the space elements, yeah.

Wolf: Maybe, maybe I can add some flavor to this question, right? I think, I think my opinion is not too far from, from probably what Nas would say. But I, I, I’m probably a little bit more engaged with the, with the NFT community than, than Nas says. But my opinion is, is that when we kind of dropped off in the last crash of our Bitcoin, I think we were in that Meme coin phase, right? We had all the, all the dog coins ever popping up left, right, where it was all about who makes the most noise and what’s the next pump and dump scheme. And that kind of transitioned over into the NFT space. And to be honest, a lot of the founders that have started companies or projects within NFTs don’t necessarily have the background or experience required to run a successful company. So, as Nas mentioned, there’s a lot that goes into building a product, let alone building a company, and there’s, there’s just not enough experienced founders out there, in my opinion. So, you’ll see a lot of the stuff that keeps popping up is extremely short-lived and fizzles out, and for the matter because it’s not well thought out, it’s not well considered, it’s just an opportunistic approach by founders as well as from the community. The mindset is that of meme coins. And so, within that entire chaos and noise, you will find gems, I believe, like Rebels, where you have established or proven founders with the proven track record who were actually trying to build a tech. There’s a few out there, it’s just that you need to find those, and I think those are the ones that will survive through the bear and emerge again. There’s different or varied definitions of success, but I feel like those NFTs or those projects will survive the bear more than the ones that are chasing pipe dreams, don’t have necessarily the right skill sets in place, are pandering to community demands for, you know, tokens and whitelist raffles and stuff like that, because that’s not a product. These, none of these are products. And I think I’ve watched Nas mention earlier about, is that you need, you need a product. Like, our focus is to make NFTs usable, and by usable, I mean sellable. That’s our, I think projects that will focus on those two aspects for the tech will probably do better in the future.

Chris: All right, all right! So, well said, sir. My next question is something that’s interesting even to the holders who are listening here, listening right now. So, what’s actually next for Rebel? Can you talk to us more about the exciting future of Rebels and your plans for 2023 to ensure the longevity of the project?

Nas: Yeah, I can talk to that. I think that, you know, the great thing is that we’ve set, we set the expectations kind of fairly early on the type of project that it would be, and it’s, it is going to be extremely bottom-up. And we always made it clear that it’s important for the community to feel like they can propose things and actually kind of like take ownership of the project. So, to that effect, you have, you know, we have people in the community, you know, building different, building different kind of, I would say, products, you know, and, and for us as a community to stand behind them. I’m thinking of, you know, one of the community members started a started an AI AI competition platform which we actually used as part of the, as part of the community essentially to create AI art competitions. And there is like a whole set of things, amazing people just building, you know, mystery novels that are also maintaining an additional, you know, there are like quite a few things that are coming out of the community that are so interesting and absolutely wonderful in terms of creativity. As to the work, as to the work of, you know, kind of the team behind the project, we’re heads down essentially, you know, ensuring that the patch, you know, customization just launches as soon as possible. As I mentioned, you know, we worked essentially like extremely hard, especially throughout the second part of last year, building all the code like that, that essentially can handle the customization, the like rendering level, and also just building artwork for patches and other things. And so I think this, we’re in a pretty good place of, like, just work on at the integration level and smart contract level now, and so that’s going to be the thing that we’re focusing on. We’re gonna try to also work with great partners who can help us get, like, a, you know, a good distribution channel as well. And so, very excited to bring that to market, as Wolf mentioned, kind of taking it one step at a time, you know, that there is no, there is no need in kind of promising the moon. This is the thing that we promised and that we’ll achieve, and we just want to make sure that every single thing that we release is just, you know, of the highest quality. That’s it, because our holders deserve it. And again, we have to start making NFTs usable, and if the product sucks, it is not going to be used. That’s as simple as that.

Alduin:And I’m sure your community is looking forward to that. They’re excited for it. Actually, we do have one last question, but we would like to also say that after this question, we have a Q&A. So, for our audience, read your questions. You can make a request to be a speaker and ask our wonderful guest your questions, or you can actually comment down here, and we can read them for you. So, without further ado, last but not least, for new NFT projects launching this, what suggestions do you have for them to be successful? What are some key things to keep in mind when starting a new project in the NFT space?

Nas: I would. I would, so I named it the token last test, and it’s actually, if you’re… if you actually want to make something that works, not just given the current market, but for the future that will actually last, like, you know, a very long time and build a sustainable business, you essentially need to build an ecosystem and a business that works without NFTs. And NFTs, at the end of the day, are a way for your users to interoperate with other ecosystems, right? So if you think about something as simple as Counter-Strike, everyone loves Counter-Strike, obviously. Skins are available within CS:GO. At the end of the day, the work, the people owning skins within the closed ecosystem just works great, right? And it is a great product on its own, and people will continue to play just because, you know, the product is great. And it is, it is some like it has a great network of people available where you can communicate, you can actually share experiences, play, like, you know, get your anger out, whatever that is that actually makes you love the game. But NFTs could be added on top of it to gain interoperability with other ecosystems, right? Like people who would want potentially to do more with their skin, supply their skin somewhere else or unlock additional things and create additional communities outside of the platform based on their skins. And so that’s really how I think about it. I know that, like, you know, there is going to be a lot of speculation, there’s short term, and it is going to continue like we keep seeing that. Hopefully not for long, but I really strongly believe that, you know, the winners after this era are going to be the ones that actually make an ecosystem that works without tokens, but tokens are added on top of it to enable additional experiences essentially. And this is pretty much what we saw happen with the ICO crash, for example, you know, back in… Every single person under the sun was making an ICO, ranging from doctors to, you know, just the like building makers and other things. You know, there was, there was something for, there was an ICO for every single thing on earth. And at the end of the day, the thing that actually ended up working were ecosystems such as, you know, Ethereum and others, where the token is actually a lot less important than the functionality that is provided, right? Like the vast majority of the people on Ethereum are actually using Ethereum. The people that are on top of Polygon are actually using Polygon, the technology, and it is being powered by a token, but the token is not the reason why people are joining the ecosystem. So I really strongly believe that if the bear market lasts, you know, two to three years, which is probably going to be the case, given what we’re seeing, and it’s probably going to be like a slowdown trend for the next two years or three years until we have another amazing kind of usage and peak of interest based on some use cases. I do believe that the winners will be the ones that actually create a system that works without a token, but add tokens on top of it to, you know, increase even more the value of being part of this ecosystem.

Alduin: Thank you, thank you for that, and I believe everybody got a lot of insights from what you said. So now, I hope you’re ready. We are opening the floor for questions. It is Q&A time. So, for our wonderful audience, you may now request to speak up, and I see that SixGod, a while ago, was requesting. So, come on up to our floor to ask your question.

SixGod: Yo, hi guys! My question… yeah, I had one for SixGod, bro. Just kidding, just one. As there’s… is there an estimate, like, when the projects are gonna launch? Because, as you know, we’re all hyped for it. That’s my question.

Nas: Whoops, actually, alright. Oh yeah, go on. No, no, it’s good.

Wolf: Like, I don’t think I heard the question right, so if you heard it, go ahead. 

Nas: I think it was mostly around timing for the patches, and so I was actually saying that you and I actually had a very soon conversation with Partners on this. You know, it’s a bit hard to evaluate because like some of the things are actually a little bit outside of our controls in terms of some of the people who are gonna participate in building this infrastructure as well and help us with, mostly, a lot of the front-end work. By front-end, I mean the actual user interface, not the entire backend behind the scenes. So yeah, like, we’re, you know, I hate giving timelines because every time that I give timelines, like, we fuck it up, and it’s like we’re late. So I just don’t want to, like, didn’t take this time. Hopefully, we have something that is available soon enough and that we get, like, a commitment, essentially, a time commitment from the folks that we’re working with to kind of finalize everything, test it, and, you know, at the end of the day, I do believe that we’ll have probably Sue, those and other highly respected people in the community, haven’t already accessed prior to the rest, to kind of get feedback, test things out. If things are broken, you know, we’ll probably, I guess, send some of the Rebels to people myself to make sure that everything goes well. But yeah, you know, we’re working on it. Again, hopefully, it won’t be too long before everything is finalized. 

Wolf: Yeah, that’s all. Thanks, Nas. Yeah, I know. I mean, no, I just want to add that it’s, you know, from a strategy point of view, it’s, you know, these partners are more in line with what, you know, how Rebels is looking to operate in this space. I think, as last mentioned, there’s, we’re looking at probably a couple of years, at least, off of a bear, right? We don’t know how bad it’s gonna get before it starts to get any good, which means we don’t know how we want to manage our treasury, manage our time, manage all of our resources that we have at our disposal. And so it just made sense to, you know, partner up with people who have aligned, or where the vision or the approach is aligned, and, you know, we just get stronger by partnering up with people. And that’s kind of what the, I would say, the way of working seems to be for now. Great, Nas. That’s exactly right. I think it’s like the reality is that, you know, if we had a lot more money, we could have essentially thrown, you know, dollars at the problem and just, you know, get like a pretty strong team. The reality is that we actually have, like, I think it was like two months and a half ago, we had, like, a couple proposals from Dev Studios, but we actually didn’t have the money to pay them. Essentially, it was like north of $16,000. And so, at the end of the day, we also need to make sure that we have kind of a solution that works financially, especially, you know, and it was very clear from all the conversations that I was having with people at OpenSea and other kind of leaders, without behind the scenes, that, you know, the royalty streams would just dry up. And not that we had a lot in it to begin with, but, yeah, it’s pretty clear that, you know, the secondary sales are gonna just drop to zero. So, we essentially need to make sure that, however we structure it, we have enough money to keep the lights on, right? Like, because at the end of the day, you know, we’re hosting, or I guess we can say, like, over 13,000 images of 30 megs each. And, as you can imagine, you know, hosting that just costs money. The customization is going to cost money over time, etc. So, you know, there will be recurring operational costs for the project that are right now not even subsidized by royalties. So, that means that we’re not even making enough money through royalties to make the project not even profitable, but just not lose money over time. And so, that’s the part where we have to be extremely conscious, and I’m, you know, I’m very aware of, like, things taking a bit more time. But, at the end of the day, we need the project to keep the lights on, especially throughout the bear market. So, that is the most important thing that I also recommend anyone working in this space right now is just ensuring that you will be able to pull through this, you know, the next two to three years and conserve, like, whatever you can from your treasury to kind of live until, you know, things pick up. And that’s the important part.

Alduin: Yeah, I agree with that, and I hope that you do have that, especially in the coming times. So, are there any other questions from our audience? You may speak up right now. You can request or you may actually comment down on our comment section here, and we can just ask for you, for our wonderful guests.

Wolf: So, I see a question from Saland. Obviously, it is one Lambo, and I believe that Lambos are going to be air-dropped next Monday at 4 pm PT. The Lambos are going to be blue and black, so it is going to be great. We’ve worked on that for the past eight and a half years, and yeah, I’m super excited about it. It’s gonna be great. That is a very good advice, one Shameless plug here. We have in the audience a mystery novel NFT, so at Dimension get VR, an amazing, you know, creative person in the community who’s released essentially a novel, a book based around Rebels. It’s called the five deadly Rebels, and it’s about, you know, kind of like inspired from some of the characters from Rebels and Pier, and just giving them life in a great universe. So just started minting the collection for the books, and so I’m very excited for you to know for that. So please check it out. Mystery novel NFT is actually, you know, we need great people who build, you know, lore and IPs within the space and really hopeful that you will succeed doing so, and yeah, we’re all behind you.

Alduin: I see that SixGod has another question when Nas is at PHS.

Nas: At what?

Alduin: pH, I think, Philippines.

Nas: Oh wow, when? When pH well in the in the VC in the PH VC, we can probably arrange that this weekend. But I think that IRL is gonna take a bit of time because I’m hammered at a level by work that is hard to describe. Actually, work probably like 25 to 26 hours a day, so it is a bit hard these days. But I will, I will come visit one day for sure, man.

Alduin: And that’s great! Do our audience have any more questions? Because if not, then Nas, Big Bad Wolf, thank you for being with us today—I mean, today. And do you have… Oh, there’s one more request from Mystery Novel. Come on up! Hi, Mystery Novel!

MysteryNovel: Oh, hey! Yes, I was afraid that my spaces nightmare was happening again. My mic always gets messed up. But anyway, I just want to say thanks, thanks NASA. It’s finally great to hear your voice and speak to you with my own voice instead of DMing. And Wolf, thank you so much too. You’ve been my biggest supporter, really. And the Rebels Community is… you know, I’m just… oh, I’m just always overwhelmed by how great it is. And I just wanted to say thank you to everybody. That’s it, and have a good night. We’ll see you guys on Twitter, on Spaces, and on chats tomorrow.

Nas: Excited. Super excited!

MisteryNovel: Thanks so much! All right, thank you. Bye.

Alduin: Yeah, thank you for that. So, as I was saying, if there are no more questions, Nas, big bad wolf, thank you for being with us here today. Do you have any final things to say or do you have anything else to plug?

Nas: No, honestly, just, you know, so, so happy that we’re having conversations that really helped the space, you know, get maturity. We don’t get a lot of those conversations, and I think that like this is very important. Yeah, no, I’m super, I’m super excited, you know, to, to, to hear people kind of like taking the right approach, to, you know, again, like providing majority to the space. And I’m so proud, also, of, you know, people in the community that have been building great things. Obviously, you know, we have Dimension here, we have wolf obviously, for is doing great things, and you know, other people in the community. So, I’m very, very excited about it, and you know, for people in the audience who are part of the community, whenever I can do anything to help, please let me know. I will always be your biggest supporter, just, just like everyone has been an amazing supporter to me. So, very excited for that, and, and guys at the token Minds, folks, I’m, I’m super thankful for, for you guys to, to host us tonight.

Alduin: And we’re really thankful that you’re here with us, too. 

Nas: I host a Spaces series, basically under the Twitter handle “big bad NFT show”. We’ve got an episode coming up this Sunday, so mark the focus for that is more on the B2B and Enterprise and non-meta use cases for NFT technology. We have an episode coming up with a company called “check the io”. They’re working on digital identity in the web space and they have some solutions around that. So please tune in, go check out the announcement around that as well, but that’s just the plug I wanted to make. Thanks a lot, thanks for the opportunity TokenMinds. I really enjoy it here, and hopefully, we’ll continue to stay in touch and collaborate. Thanks.

Alduin: Yes, thank you too, and for our audience, of course, tune in to Big Bad Wolf’s Twitter space. And yeah, so if you want to know more about NFT strategies, we do this weekly. We are TokenMinds. I am your host, Alduin, and I have my co-host here, Chris Barbaquci. Thank you for that, and yeah, to everyone, good day, good morning, good evening, and good afternoon to wherever you are. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us.

Chris: Thank you, guys.