Eben Matthews discusses Macroverse's NFT platform for comics

0:18the nft initiatives and other initiatives that you have your team's really working on a bunch of different solutions for the blockchain space i would love it if you could just kick it off for us with a high level overview and the focus of macroverse absolutely so macroverse is a company that we started about two years ago we actually started as a next generation

0:38digital cons platform and then we bumped into nfc world like so much of the other people that have become excited about this space in january i've had some exposure to kind of blockchain and a little bit of the you know kind of crypto art scene prior to that but when we really started to understand what the potential and the implications of this technology

1:01for basically every industry you know after a couple months of exploding heads we decided this is the future of basically everything and we need to be a part of it and we've you know i wouldn't say pivoted but we've certainly shifted focus so we're very excited about kind of taking blockchain and nfts and all the things that can enable us to do and

1:23applying it to comics to storytelling to entertainment and much much much much more so that's where macroverse is now focused definitely and i've you know i've seen a bunch of other platforms that are you know they were focused on something sort of niche and i think comics is really nice and i want to touch on that and then once you realize the potential of nfts as it

1:46exploded throughout the last 12 16 months all of a sudden you realize hey this is actually something that is super unique which would is a total added value for nfts and i'm curious on the comic side can you talk a little bit about the background and how you were working with comics is your team experienced in that or where did that inspiration come from

2:04yeah so super super experienced and very personal for me so you know i learned to read from comics when i was a little kid i've been collecting comics my entire life i thought i was going to be a professional comics artist so that was my kind of initial career track so i did go to art school for illustration and came out and ended up doing a bunch of other stuff in the

2:24creative media world but comics have always been near and dear to my heart and we produced a boondock saints graphic novel in the kind of traditional print side of the comics industry and we came out of that really feeling like there was an opportunity to reinvent comics for the next generation for digital and so that's where we started mac reverse from was kind of looking at

2:47what was the place in the market in the comics world that we could really make an impact empower creators help people tell stories including ourselves we're also storytellers and so we built the first version of the platform with that in mind and at this point we've got over 100 creators that we're working with we've launched over 45 series over

3:07the past year we're closing in on about a thousand episodes of content either already released or in production and this new element of nfts and all the things that it enables just takes something that's been inherent to comics from day one certainly an inherent part of my experience which is the collectibility component of it and now allows us to bring that to

3:28digital comics and to me that is super exciting it is very exciting and i'm excited to dive into some of those comics as well and combining it with nfts you know providing a unique solution there are a lot of nft marketplaces that are already live and i haven't seen a lot to do with comics but was there a friction or a gap in the market that you saw

3:49was it was it really that the type of content whether it be comics and these other niches that you have or another friction that you're really trying to position yourself to have that competitive advantage like in the nft space overall yeah so it's two-sided i mean what we're building has two main components to it the comics piece which will be the first

4:08truly collectible digital comics that have come to exist at this point and the main thing that we saw there which we already kind of had a couple steps down the road on in what we were working on before is the ability to really consume an nft as a single experience as opposed to a single image so you know when we think about a multi-page document there's no good

4:32solution for that as an nft so you know if you were thinking about comics you know you've got 20 to 100 to you know however many pages in an individual story you would have to take each of those and put them on a marketplace somewhere and then someone would have to go and collect each every each and every single page and then those end up in a wallet and

4:50how do you read it how do you collate it like you know what's the how do you get this story what's not a good experience so we figured out a way with our team to sell an nft that is actually that full experience of the con we can to give a actually better experience than we think our competitors do in the non-nft world as a consumer as a reader of this

5:12material so that part's really exciting and then the other thing that we're really focused on with our platform is we had always had a lot of ideas around how to really bring creators to the forefront and really celebrate the creators that make this great content and so being able to kind of bring a new nft platform to the creators that's really focused on

5:33storytelling so less about the kind of fine art world and really more about comics creators and storyboard artists and concept artists and people that do character design and animators and people that are kind of in the world of making the content that we love on our on a day-to-day basis so that's our focus for our platform is really a home for storytellers

5:52and then helping those people tell those stories first in comics and then in other media as well definitely and you're right i've seen pictures and animated gifs but i really haven't seen a full story book or a book as an nft or never mind a comic so that's definitely a unique competitive advantage to be able to put a whole story into an nft and working with these

6:15creators you know some of them likely not well well-versed in blockchain as well and the intricacies behind putting these comments on the blockchain is obviously gonna have a huge advantage and you did mention that you've already worked with hundreds a hundred plus different creators and brands maybe you can talk about some of those major partnerships that you made and you

6:35mentioned you've already produced a lot of content we have so we have a bunch of theories that we're really proud of and then we've got some new ones and i want to i'll highlight a couple that i'm really excited about our first drops of these collectible comics will be in july and there's a couple of series that are in these first couple of batches one is from the creator of a comic

6:55series called bitter root so comics fans will definitely know that it's an eisner award winner which is the oscar of the comics industry and it's also just been announced as a film adaptation with legendary pictures david f walker is the creator of this new series he also created a character called naomi for dc which is about to be a cw tv show as well so

7:19we've got a new series with him and then in our second batch of launches we're working with the showrunner and producer of both portlandia and harmonquest and we're doing a brand new series of his that will launch as this nfc comic product and then we've got a bunch more but those are a couple that i'm you know announcing actually here first so amazing

7:43those will be coming out in very short order and then we've got another 10 or 12 titles in these first drops and really the whole rest of the year scheduled out with some really exciting creators really exciting projects as well as other collaborations that we can't announce yet but you know kind of all over the media landscape we've got some some really exciting things coming

8:01down the pipe very cool evan and i'm excited for that launch in july of 2021 here and from what i understand there with macroverse you know the maker verse platform and it has a lot of other functionalities besides just being able to look at these nfts you know with coming launch pad marketplaces nft creation can you give a little explanation for

8:24you know those readers of comics and the creators on how that works when you go to the platform in those different functionalities absolutely so the maker verse part of it is the creator platform the creator marketplace but we're building a few things which i think bring a little extra spin to kind of what we've seen so far so it's really about creating this

8:44ecosystem for creators and the content that they make and so whether that's comics or again someone that's doing a bunch of concept art that suggests a story or a world whatever medium the creator works in we do have this kind of storytelling you know focus but we're doing some things that allow creators to interact with their fans and with their collectors

9:05a little more like a kickstarter like a patreon so that you know we have ways of kind of getting real engagement ongoing engagement between those creators and their collectors and fans more than just kind of a single transaction so it's almost like an nft platform with a little bit of social with you know some of these other kind of engagement tools that we've seen pop up in

9:26different places that work really well and then you bring all that together under the umbrella of larger narratives and story and different types of experiences that we can deliver inside of our apps and that starts to get really interesting and exciting so it's kind of the sky's the limit as it comes to people being able to come and not just drop a piece of digital art but really

9:48build something that could turn into a franchise or it could turn into something you know much bigger beyond that kind of initial thing definitely evan and i hear it all the time where you know there's so many artists just in their bedrooms creating content and they're trying to monetize it and get out of that starving artist mentality and so and so

10:07how focused on the platform were you when you realized you know the potential for all these different types of artists to create this art in terms of driving cash flows to them and being able to get you know revenues from their customers more directly using these technologies i mean dude that is that is one of the things i'm the most excited about

10:26because you know as people that have created a bunch of content in a bunch of different mediums over the course of our careers and myself and my co-founders we probably made something in just about any entertainment medium that you can name and having been on the hollywood accounting side of things or you know are these metrics really the real metrics you know from partners or

10:46customers over the years it's so exciting to think about you know bringing a team together to create something like that having this you know kind of smart contract layer where we can come in from the beginning and say here are these five people and you get this much and you get this much and you get this much and here's the residuals forever in secondary market sales

11:06and then no one ever has to think about it again that is so thrilling to me the instantaneous transaction of being able to you know just put something together generate revenue from it have that have a long tail with residuals and royalties which is something people in entertainment often either don't get or you know don't feel like they get as much as they should have in

11:26some cases so having that just all set up to begin with is super exciting and i think it just gives a whole new layer to people's ability to make something together or by themselves and then really reap the rewards of that forever super cool definitely smart contracts are a beautiful thing and i'm really excited to see that play out into fruition and that sort of leads me

11:48to asking about the macroverse token and the ecosystem i know that there is a cryptocurrency as well involved in the platform can you talk about the macroverse token how that works with the creators and the users and does it create a sustainable ecosystem for all the participants yeah we're very excited about the token spoiler alert we haven't mentioned the

12:09token anywhere for today so we're excited to have that exclusive review here as well the token does a couple of things which we think are really cool one is it does function as an in-app currency so it is something you can actually use to purchase within our own ecosystem but the other thing that i think is the most exciting is that we really feel strongly that

12:33the main purpose of the token is to reward the community for their participation in the economy of the entire platform and that's one of the concepts in crypto and you know kind of d5 that i just have fallen in love with which is that the people that create the most value reap the most rewards and so being able to reward our creators and our collectors and our

12:55fans you know both in the short term in their participation in the ecosystem but also in a way that i've come to think of it over time that you know the people that really provide the most value and that reap those awards essentially become our partners they kind of become you know shareholders in the growth of the company and they really get incentivized to see us succeed in a

13:18grander and grander way so i think it's it's a very cool way to kind of bring something to the platform into the community where you really feel like you have a piece of this thing that you're participating in my co-founder i just i kind of love this and my co-founder you know coined this phrase he said you know we currently in social media kind of live

13:38in this attention economy where it's trading our attention for you know something that maybe we're getting from from social media and what this allows us to do is kind of shift our focus to a participation economy where you really are rewarding people for their activity as opposed to just you know give me some time and you know your scroll so i think

13:58there's a lot of exciting things that we've got planned for the token and how they how it works on the platform all the different things you can do with it but fundamentally that concept of reward in exchange for participation and having that grow over time for everyone involved i think is incredibly meaningful for everyone that participates everyone that gets

14:20involved i agree evan participation is key and for the viewers that are looking to get into participating when the platform launches maybe you can give a snapshot of you know the launch is upcoming soon what are the next steps when that launch happens and how can people get involved at that point yeah so our website is macroverse.com and there are two things you can do on

14:44the website right now one is to register as a creator for early access to the platform and then the other is to register interest as a collector or a fan and there'll be a couple of incentives for people that take advantage of that so for creators who register their interest will start to onboard people at some point this month in june for collectors and fans you'll get early

15:04access to some of the very first drops and maybe a couple other rewards and bonuses for kind of being first through the door and then from there we launch in july with our first set of comic projects and then basically every week we've got something cool planned as additional material that comes from there so we've got a full road map for the rest

15:26of the year we've got an incredible batch of content with an incredible group of creators and a lot more features that we'll be rolling out on the platform so it's a it's a great time to kind of go for a fun ride starting very very soon very very exciting evan thank you for those details and i will leave the macroverse links in the description box below i'm

15:46really excited for the launch in july all the best with that i will be watching as well and let's follow up in the near future absolutely ashton thank you so much appreciate it