Justin Wu on building community in the blockchain industry

0:20introduction of coin state and yourself as well could you give an overview of coin state and how you got involved with it yeah definitely so coin state is kind of a I guess the best categorization is we're like a media and community company for the blockchain industry we hosts conferences and events across I guess North America and also – we also help

0:44build communities in evangelism for some of the top protocols and projects out there such as like Tesoro's hash graph and beyond so we're always looking to kind of help bring people together educate them and kind of move the needle fourthly watching the industry by kind of I guess providing a lot of value in all these different aspects where the education connections or

1:10marketing that's great Justin and there definitely is a need for more community growth and awareness of this technology because it's just such fantastic technology but if you're just talking about it to other people that already love it then we're never going to be able to expand to the real world here wouldn't you agree yeah definitely if you can build the

1:30best product but if nobody knows about it doesn't really matter at all because I was using it and also – we believe that the blossom industry needs to get outside the blossom bubble and do the crossover into more developers or the broader industries so that we can actually get this into real mainstream youth and adoption awesome and when did you first get into crypto currencies and

1:56blockchain technology yourself and then how long and after until you actually started coin state yeah so I got into crypto and Bitcoin specifically about in 2013 so I heard about it bought a few on coinbase actually our my first few Bitcoin says buying it from with cash because a little weird transactions the restaurant just buying it but you know I was really fascinated

2:22by the digital currencies and the you know being able to just own your own money without any human piece and when I first started I didn't know about blockchain as much but as I continue to progress more into the space and really work more into the business side of blockchain about a year and a half ago that's kind of like a literary went all in the industry but my real bump into

2:50the crypto has been really I'd say because I was a big gamer and played a lot of video games and I started seeing people transact with these bitcoins or like coin or dogecoin with the dog on it to buy digital assets like video game characters skins in access and so I was like okay cool this is this is a digital currency they could just transact with

3:11people find value in it and extract value from it then then it's good it's interesting thing for me to take a look at because it was like a video it's like video game currency back then it's totally yeah I think it still is there's a huge part of the gaming industry which are actually leading the adoption of crypto currencies you know wax world's wide asset exchange which is trading in

3:34game items and digital tokens and stuff they actually do more volume than finance so it seems like it actually seems to be leading the revolution is there any specific technologies in gaming that you are excited for in integrating blockchain yeah well I think that the gaming side is still very nascent you know for first and foremost the a game watching game has to

3:56be a good game first and whether the underlying technology is damned Oreos or Tron or Lou or any other platforms you know that is really matter to gamer at all so you know I'm always interested in actually seeing the games that are kind of full triple-a looking games before they actually go out and talk about blockchain in and so what am i favorite the favorite ones it's called

4:21blank Coast right now like PLA and Kos and that is created by mythical game and they are full team of ex Activision and Blizzard developers so people that actually have experience building games traditionally like Call of Duty of World of Warcraft they're building a blocking game now too so we kind of need more of that where there's actually veterans in whatever

4:43industry coming into the space and applying their knowledge to then execute something that can be usable by many and everywhere I think at the end of the day it really comes down to the user experience and there's definitely a difference between having a game that's built on the blockchain or in the blockchain and having a game that just utilizes either crypto currencies or

5:04known fungible tokens as in-game assets but the game itself isn't really bottlenecked by the limitations of blockchain technology right now where they are there definitely are a lot of limitations I'm sure that people speak about at your events when people are trying to build applications on the blockchain we're always limited by either the transaction scalability or any other

5:26limitations right yeah definitely and you know there are interesting projects to help on the scalability side but you know and that definitely doesn't pack the user experience for these apps orgy apps or games but I think that's in the end the day still it's still a question mark whether gamers truly care about digital ownership assets and in the way that crypto people like it

5:55versus because the thing is that if the best example I like to say is that people said that oh if fortnight had digital assets of trading then I would choose that game over fortnight but the data has shown that's not true because pop G had tradable assets it wasn't crypto but they allow you to still trade peer-to-peer skins and assets to other people on the steam

6:20marketplace and that was you know data shows it's not the better game for tonight's just crushing it because it was a strong game first before adding these skins and assets the game gamers you know are wanting to play the core of the game first everything else is kind of like extra on to it so to speak so it's interesting to see and then there you know I always like to

6:43dive deep into this topic just because I'm heavy in the video game industry as well as eSports industry and I'm having the blushing side but the marrying of both I'm still kind of finding what that connect would be because when it comes to games when you start having people to be able to buy assets for games in that world but the moment that the asset has any type of benefit or

7:08value in terms of use it becomes what the gaming industry considered pay2win meaning anyway that super-rich can come in and just buy all the different lands the worlds the tanks of vehicles of weapons and destroying everybody else that can't paint to win and that becomes the game doesn't become a game anymore because they like a world that is dictated by those who have deep pockets

7:35and wallets and so that's the kind of like a one-game game design issue that I'm seeing that on the blocking side of things were gaming assets if they're truly tight then there's no benefit for the for the gamers on that side too so but I can go on and on there's so many other topics I know it all at the end of the day it's all about the user experience right and with pay to win

7:59games if generally if you don't have a lot of money or you don't want to spend a lot of money to pay to win it isn't a good user experience right just as if you had assets on the ethereum blockchain and all of a sudden you switch to the eos blockchain with the same game it doesn't really provide an additional user experience the people that are playing the games don't really care it's

8:21all about the content that they're you know invested in the beginning just the core content so if we could reference that back to your events you know what kind of core content and messaging are you sending to your events so that it's not scary it's not.you know this is you're here to learn just about blockchain of course it's all about having a great time how do you position

8:42coin state as a community where it's like hey we're going to teach you the basics oh we're just here to have fun yeah so the way that I've always gone about building any type of a community is right no BS no fluff no hype no no shell content events and community and that's everything true to anything that whether it be from watching or not watching and

9:11so the type of event that we kind of run is an event like Seattle DEFCON that's coming up in June here where we're looking to build an event that is both inclusive and accessible so meaning our ticket prices is going to be really really like not even covering costs like we're gonna make it fully community sponsored it's just there to really help us help cover some of the costs but you

9:38know it's gonna be you know don't quote me but like anywhere like 10 20 dollar range for tickets which is 10 times or more or less X cheaper than all these other conferences out there because we're not a event marketing company and we're not a for-profit for the event side we make all our money through working in consulting with other companies and we're happy with that and

9:58on the community side though we're so we've been seeing so much other conferences and events where they're just a full for-profit event which you know I'm not hating for-profit at all I mean we're all trying to make money here but you'll see that both in the price on the line up the sponsors of the shills everybody is just kind of like therefore try to milk and she'll the

10:18shuttles instead of building the actual foundations for the community and so what does high ticket price do one it alienates the early learners because they do not want to pay money like they don't have the financial or crypto ball in cash to buy the thousand or two thousand dollar ticket to the blockchain curious let's say like the developers that are working for

10:43Microsoft and sought in a current bear market they don't really fully believe in boxing why are they gonna go spend even $100 to an event that they don't really fully believe it right and so we wanted to eliminate that barrier and have them all come together in a meeting spot and then on the event side that's where it's our duty to have both beginner and advanced level tracks

11:07so that we can hit both sides of the worlds because that's the only way that we can really hit more mass adoption is by getting more people in the door and making this technology or these technologies not a mystery and not a big black box and anonymous and in all the drug-drug some Road level knowledge right we need to educate them on that space and how I'm work them all it's an

11:30advanced level where how we can facilitate more connections in advanced level topics about this technology so people can go out and learn so that's kind of like the way that we go about our events that's great Justin and yeah I truly believe that as well sorry bless you and so with the events you know you really and you mentioned that you guys are doing a Devcon event you really do

11:51need more developer focused community focused events because we can have an event to showcase some projects where people are coming to learn or to either play a game that's using blockchain technology or to learn about other applications but there will only be so many applications if there aren't any more developers that are learning about the underlying technology to build those

12:13new applications there's not going to be much to choose from definitely definitely and even though we call it DEFCON like it's yes we're still gonna have a non-technical track as well too because we always believe that side is also important too for us in the spirit of just focus though in terms of the speakers and the technology side like we wanted to call it at Def Con so

12:34that we can focus on the actual technology and platform side to then attract more builders which is what we need to compute forward so that's kind of like the theme of what we're going for our event yeah and normally we talk about some financial metrics on our interviews here in terms of your events the applications that you guys showcase or discussing do people focus on you

12:59know how is this actually gonna become a sustainable business because to a certain endpoint when you're building an application it's great to spend all the time and money to build something great but if you make it very developer focused and you don't have a sustainable business model then it will die in the short term because of lack of funding or you know the founders need to pay the

13:20rent and eat so how much is focused on the actual business of how to integrate blockchain but actually use it in a business setting well I think on the business side like we do have conversations in a flowtraq about the business side of blockchain and I think it's very very important and I think that because we are inviting a lot of the developers and protocols I think

13:46that the people on the business side should be talking to the developers and the protocol sites you then understand how they can actually fully implement this into their business and enterprises so you know like for what's interesting about Seattle specifically is that we do have a lot of enterprise c-level exact sent Boeing Amazon Microsoft etcetera involved in the

14:11Russian space and building blockchain right now and you know I think that this is a perfect moment where even if you're in the business side you have to understand what's going on the actual platforms itself to then bring back to whether you can't use this as a business function or not in whatever industry and so that's that's kind of like a focus where it's not just

14:37projects do what we've invited the on the protocol level like the actual operating systems of these different systems out there to have these conversations and come meet and talk with the people in the community definitely I completely agree with that Justin and I understand what you're saying in terms of you need to understand the technology otherwise

14:58you're really just a Salesman that's selling all of the you know top buzzwords like blockchain and AI you can just add those all in a sentence but if you don't really understand because it does provide actual value into these applications but if you really understand how it's providing that value yeah exactly and you'll find that these developers and protocols are

15:18wanting to get more adoption in integrations so though working in with you to find and test those proof of concepts and ideas out there so that's you know that's that's where we wants to kind of mix those conversations into to facilitate and make that happen wonderful and tell us a little bit more about what upcoming events you have I know there's a lot of people that are

15:41starting to be interested in the space again there's a little life in everybody that's starting to burn bright and I'm excited to come to some more coin state events so what's coming up for Wednesday yeah so Seattle's not just our only location that we did see a nose just were born and raised as our largest event by far but we also have events in Phoenix Arizona Los Angeles San

16:06Francisco in q3 and then hopefully soon up in Vancouver too with you Ashton we want to continue to kind of spread the knowledge and build these little yes different groups and communities across different cities and also just connect them all together in one site so we are building kind of like a queen state platform where you can go and chat with

16:28other people within different cities and connections as well too so we're looking to help facilitate those transactions in terms of like communication and value to value trade amazing and one house can people get involved with coin state speak to you learn more or just learn more about the events yeah you can go to Quin State comm or reach out to meet at

16:48Justin at Wayne State calm I'm always accessible find me on Twitter or LinkedIn I'm always looking to collaborate with others and grow this space together awesome thank you so much Justin whoo founder of coin state it's been a pleasure speaking to you I'm looking forward to your upcoming events and to get more people involved in the blockchain community and thank you for

17:09your time today for the interview awesome thanks again