Ben Lakoff on Charged Particles' innovative NFT protocol

0:22what you're doing in the nft space now and some of the solutions that you're providing and i would love for you to just kick it off with an overview and the focus of those solutions from charged particles and then we can dive into the details yeah sure so charge particles is an nft protocol that allows you to put other assets inside of your nft so it's still an erc

0:44721 standard erc standard nft but you're able to in a programmatic way put other assets inside of it so this can be erc 20 tokens so anything speculative tokens social tokens lp tokens from uniswap v2 this could be other nfts so you can kind of create this russian doll of nfts locked within nfts and then the third category is still erc20

1:10but also these would be d5 interest bearing assets so we have integrations with ave and compound so you're able to have an asset containerized into this nft earning yield all with within within one so it creates this really awesome token mechanic that we're we're super excited about definitely and yeah this really does take nfts to the next level you know for all these

1:34people that are just getting involved in the crypto space right now seeing like oh you know nfts you can you can collect them and you know that a lot of people sort of see them as just digital art right now but you can really turn these into financial products and have so much more functionality you know in terms of the nft space when you started

1:49started charged particles and you were looking at nfts did you see issues with the way that nfts are built right now or is it really just that they're just lacking the functionality and they need to move it to the next level yeah it's more of the latter and i can't take credit for the idea behind charged particles so rob secord he was the founder visionary he's been thinking about this

2:09thing since late 2019. so we had a proof of concept early 2020 we grabbed the twitter handle defy nft in february of 2020 so this is before d5 summer so before a lot of people knew about d5 and long before you know this latest nft boom so rob had a ton of incredible foresight of thinking what the what an nft would look like if it could do

2:37had had this additional functionality and could do so much more so yeah he definitely deserves all the credit there that's for sure very cool and you mentioned a couple different you know kind of financial products that you can build and you did mention there that you can take nfts and you can create other erc 20 and fungible tokens can you talk about

2:58you know how exactly does that work and sort of what's the purpose behind creating tokens within your nft yeah sure well when like you said in the beginning like most people hear nft and they think digital art they think people 69 million lists crypto art this crazy thing that's going on and that's fine i think it's a bit of a like trojan horse to get more people

3:21into crypto so overall you know it is what it is but it's important to know that nfts are not just crypto art so nft stands for non-fungible token so it's a token that is not fungible so it's it's actually almost easier to say what is not a non-clinical token which is only fungible tokens which are basically only security or only privacy coins because

3:49one equals one but all the rest have a bit of non-fungibility a bit of uniqueness associated with that token so when you broaden the scope of what is an nft not just art and you start thinking of okay well literally any unique digital item represented on the blockchain is an nft then you can start to think of all these other use cases and then when you view those use cases

4:15those other types of nfts in the ability to turn it into a container to hold other assets in a programmatic way well it starts to look very different so i mean some like small steps out from where we are with our dap is the idea of an nft being essentially a piggy bank that you put assets in and as it's earning interest the image is changing

4:41slightly over time and that amount could be time locked so it could be like a fir forced hold for your kids until they hit 18 or until the interest accumulates a certain amount of assets in there overall so we're an nft protocol we're nft agnostic any sort of nft we're we do have a dap that's that went live earlier this year in

5:06february we've had two million dollars of nft sales people trying out new different things with their nft so we had an nft filled with 14 other nfts and some social tokens sell for 42e about a month ago so people are experimenting and trying but i think the real billion dollar use case kind of hidden within this protocol and this tech is something much more financial

5:29and this is why we're doing hackathons and really encouraging the community people that understand this a lot better i have a cfa i understand a lot of these things but not like the intricacies of how that what bleeding neck problem this nft fit into this could actually solve totally and you know it's so exciting when you mention that nfts could be like a bank account some

5:54people don't actually think about these things but back in 2018 when people were starting to talk about security tokens and tokenizing and micro investing you know there was the discussion around micro investing in real estate or owning you know the stock market or your house or your car as you know a token or you know a divisible token and i think

6:15really that it was what is now becoming nfts and now you mentioned like a bank account as well it can really be as you said it's like what isn't and what can't an nft be so the possibilities do really seem endless and it's really exciting for charged particles to be you know this like open-ended platform you might mention nft agnostic did you are you

6:37guys really just building it out for you know any kind of use case and try to keep it as open-ended as possible or did you really see some first use cases in terms of the early adoption what's going to really kick off you know a more widespread adoption of adding in more functionality to nfts yeah so i mean some some use cases like aviga for example is an example of

7:02what this would look like as a game right you have different assets that are represented as a game it's a wearable it's a character it's an avatar all being able to earn like you deposit real assets inside of earn interest and change that in rarity or in value or whatever in the game so this is a use case but we chose to go with crypto art as as a good way of like let's

7:28experiment let's let's try out different different aspects i mean we've seen a lot of experimentation and this is exactly what we want because every time we have a conversation people are there their brain is exploding with ideas and it's like holy crap you mean i could have an nft i could sell it to my audience i could fill it full of my social tokens

7:51i could time like that for a year so they can't even pull it out i could put interest bearing assets in there and then the accumulated interest would give them different rights within my ecosystem so it's like the way that this would look is like my fan has an nft so i know that they're a supporter my fan has an nft with this much much interest in it

8:11that means that they've held it for a while so they jump a different tier of support and it gives you this proof of length of support that was previously kind of impossible definitely and that's super cool and it's really just like you know being able to quantify and show and prove you know your ownership to something your dedication to something or

8:35you know just any kind of tiered system and you know really having it on the blockchain we'll take it to the next level and you did mention there you already had some sales through through the nfts can you talk about that and you know going into that as the go to market strategy did you see you know the path that you took was the right one in terms of the early adoption

8:55of the platform and making it have a strong kickoff yeah sure so i mean we launched perhaps a little late to take advantage truly of like the nft boom so we launched in february but today it's over two million dollars in sales but the you know it is what it is the those kind of banner numbers the more interesting thing is all the all the different types

9:21of experimentation so people selling an nft that has another nft that's time locked inside of it that has a portion of the interest that's generated by that nft going to a charity that has social tokens and other tokens and all of these things as like a big bundle of items but this is just the first iteration i mean everything you're putting into this basket

9:45you can do in a very programmatic configurable way so you think about somebody buying an nft and it's got something else locked inside of it some other asset that then could be unlocked in a certain period of time that unlock could discharge it to another wallet for instance so i mean you could have interest interest bearing assets in there earning yield and you still own that

10:09principle and the interest could go to a third party or something so there's a there's a lot of really fascinating use cases that we're just we're just scratching the surface within art and the fact that we're nft agnostic and we're working on all these other integrations like the use of charged particles protocol is could be really really fascinating definitely and i

10:36wanted to ask you about the protocol is you know with the launch of charged particles protocol is this like its own you know separate from ethereum or interoperable with ethereum how exactly does that work and you know briefly touch on the technology that underlies making all this nft magic possible yeah sure so it's a it's a mess of smart contracts

10:57built on ethereum so i mean technically we're blockchain agnostic we could deploy on another blockchain but where are all of the nfts and d5 right now well it's on layer one ethereum so we've already deployed on polygon that goes live in two weeks from now but yeah it's the technology behind it is we are giving each nft its own smart wallet using smart

11:25contracts that allows it to hold other assets so this ability i mean this is this is what we're focusing on so being able to take our protocol and plug it into other dapps other protocols even and have this ability to charge or energize assets within their ecosystem is what we're working on very cool and i was reading that there are some fungible tokens as well that

11:48integrate with the charged particles protocol and sort of make the nft platform work and there's the ionx token token can you touch on that how it's involved with you know is it necessary for creating the nfts how else is it used within the protocol and does it create a sustainable ecosystem for the participants in charged particles yeah good question

12:10so first i'll comment on the name so if you'll notice with a lot of our theming it's sticks to the standard model of particle physics so like within the ecosystem we have each nft that you create is a proton our community is photon we have lepton which is a yield multiplier nft there's a lot of different names but they all stick to this theme which

12:35is pretty cool so what we wanted it to be was ion but microsoft actually has their own token called ion so we've called it ion x ion x is the governance token of the charged particle protocol so we believe in progressive decentralization and this is the first step so we have a number of community members and we want this protocol to be owned by the community

12:59and governed by the community and this is this is the first step for sure so right now there are no fees at the dap or at the protocol level but obviously with decentralized voting this is one of the one of the votes that could pass and we can turn on that fee bucket whenever we're ready very cool and thank you for that ben and it's seems like your team's doing really well

13:23so far with you know the launch of the dap and the nft sales so far can you talk about what are the next steps for you know and the major milestones that you're looking to achieve in the near future throughout the summer of 2021 to take charged particles to the next level yeah definitely so this is being recorded the 27th of may so sorry you'll see how how quick ashton is at

13:48editing this and publishing this out but on the 31st of may we ido so this is the public release of imx our governance token one week later we'll actually launch on polygon so most of these things i mean they've been in final testing for a number of weeks so it's finally just unveiling it to the world and then the following week the 14th we'll go live with our

14:11nft liquidity mining so first of its kind liquidity mining within your nft and this is we've got these lepton nfts within our ecosystem it's pretty cool i'm not going to go way into the details but you deposit this nft into your nft that your liquidity mining and get boosted rewards that's kind of the cliff notes so these are the next things like in the next couple weeks

14:36that's for sure but then it's it's really about broadening adoption of charge particle protocol so we're when the initial talks or kind of midway through talks with a number of other nft protocols and initial games we have a very vibrant community of people giving out great ideas and ultimately i mean the community's everything and seeing what crazy ideas that

15:02we could never even think of start to get built on top of charged particles is the really really exciting part definitely that's very exciting and i'm curious part of your marketing strategy in getting to that widespread adoption you mentioned building some partnerships you know potentially other major artists or nft creators or potential games

15:24And or do you see the financial incentives themselves of being able to monetize and have these financial products within the nfts enough to drive more adoption or will it be a combination of all that a combination and we're at the phase i mean we're pre-product market fit with a crazy awesome solution that's going to be super useful so partnering with the right people

15:45and building the right products is really well that's that's the name of the game i suppose i yeah so we're we're we're moving on all these things that i think with charged particles we're pretty uniquely positioned that yes we have a minting station in a marketplace but we don't aspire to be this you know number one minting station and marketplace out there

16:08but at a protocol layer we can integrate into these minting station and marketplaces there's a ton of them it's essentially a red ocean but like a first easy integration is that any nfts created on those platforms can be energized or charged up you can put assets on them into them on our platform so this phase 2 becomes charged particles is the charging station but put things

16:35inside of your nft and the window like see what's inside your nft so that's kind of the next step and that's that's very easy and that's that's what's happening in the next month then the next very easy right i'm using these words very very carefully obvious obviously not and then the next step is a deeper integration with these nft platforms so when you're

16:59creating an nft on a place like wearable or open c you can mint it and then you can deposit assets directly into your nft all within their ui their ux so that's a little bit longer term we're already talking to a number of people we've started to announce a few of them but these are these are longer term commitments teams that we feel aligned with like their what they're

17:22working on and really want to give them this unique ability for their users to leverage charge particle protocol when they're creating their nfts and differentiate from the long tail of nft creators and differentiate their platform from the red ocean of other nft marketplaces definitely and there's a lot of potential paths to go down because there's just so many use cases for

17:49charged particles so i'm really excited to see how it builds out and moves into fruition and you know but for now for the viewers that are looking to get involved right now learn more about charged particles protocol about ion x token and how they can start minting and use all this functionality what's the best way for them to get involved

18:11yeah sure i so probably our twitter is the easiest way to direct people so our twitter handle and if you could throw this in the video notes that'd be that'd be super helpful is defy nft so easy to remember and our website is charged dot phi so also very short but yeah that would be the best way to find out about what we're doing with charged particles and then

18:34we have an open platform so you can go to our dap and you can mint an nft we don't charge any fees you'll have to pay ethereum gas fees but then you can start doing more with your nfts and doing these crazy things and pushing the limits of what an nft looks like as an art nft and soon we'll be rolling this out to other nft platforms as well very exciting ben

18:59and yes i will leave those community links in the description box below all the best on the ido the upcoming releases in the protocol i will be looking to utilize it myself and try out all of these interesting and innovative products and i'm really excited to see how this grows because i think this is sort of the future and nfts 2.0 you know and really now that everyone is

19:23starting to learn about this outside of cryptocurrency and they're going to see the potential in how this is going to revolutionize the world so it's very exciting so thank you so much for coming on the show all the best with the charged particles moving forward and let's follow up in the near future awesome ashton really appreciate you taking the time and thanks for

19:41having me on