Revolutionizing Podcasting with Crypto Blockchain | David Kermaani

there was like a whole bunch of people waiting to like speak to me and I found that incredibly flattering. It really warmed my heart that, you know, you do something and you're not really sure what's happening on the other end and you hope that it lands with people. The thing that really was a little unsettling was the fact that I didn't really know who any of these people were. I think that is a common podcast dilemma because unless if someone is like listening and actively trying to like engage you, You just wouldn't know who your listeners are

All right. Welcome to the new age human podcast. Let me host Jon Astacio. And today we're talking with David Kermani, who's the founder and CEO of media three labs. He's also the host of a podcast called the blockchain experience. So obviously they're going to be talking about crypto and don't worry. You don't have to be anybody that's interested in crypto to benefit from this episode because David is creating a revolutionary. Podcast player that is set up to enhance the overall user experience, whether you're the host of the show, the listener of the show, or a business owner. Now, if you want to support the show, all I ask is two things. One, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That helps a lot. And two you can simply join the podcast newsletter by going to NewAgeHuman. com and with that you can get exclusive updates on the show and future projects that I'm going to be working on, Now, with that said, let's get to the show. Yeah, man. Welcome to the show. Uh, I know you do mostly, um, audio. So welcome to the video world.

Yeah, it's a little foreign to me, man.

So yes, I want to talk about just, I'm actually very curious. You guys, I had no idea that you were into crypto and then you started a podcast and talk about crypto, but maybe, uh, could you give us an idea of like what got you into crypto and starting a podcast around that?

Um, it's interesting because it's like. People know me for 2 different things and they're very different worlds and people always get shocked when they hear about 1 world when they're coming from another world and vice versa. So, uh, for you, yeah, you might not know that. Actually. Yes, I am very much into crypto. Yes, but I would say, like, broadly speaking, I'm a blockchain guy. Really? Just like the technology where you have, like, uh, a ledger. Let's like, think of it as like, a database and no 1 to nobody really owns it. Uh, so you can rely on it. It's decentralized. So there isn't like this one single authority saying that like all the information on it is correct. Rather, everyone's coming to a consensus that participates in it and saying that that information is correct, which is a lot more of a trustworthy mechanism of validation. So, um, yeah, I started off. So I've known about like Bitcoin almost kind of like from the beginning, but I was always the technology. I was always very like optimistic about, but the underlying, whether or not Bitcoin will have value. I was always a little like skeptical about, I mean, I wasn't here nor there on it, but I wasn't here enough to just like jump all in and put everything into it. So it was just something I was keeping tabs on, but I would say around like 2017. Made enough noise where I was still maybe a little skeptical about it, but it made enough noise where I felt like putting some discretionary money into it the same way that I might buy like, you know, shoes or something. And it's just like, it is what it is and just let it ride. And I don't know what's going to happen with it. So, um, it was 1 of those said it. And forget it type of things. And then what happened was is fast forward a little bit to 2021 or so. And I think this is the kind of the journey for a lot of people where NFTs really started to become a thing. Non fungible tokens, uh, they've existed since, gosh, I don't know, maybe 2017, if not earlier, but kind of hit more of the mainstream around that time. And I think Bored Ape Yacht Club probably had a lot to do with that. Um, so, uh, it, it, it just got on my radar and kind of like in the same way, I threw some money at it with no expectations of making any money. And I can already tell you right now, I didn't make any money. All right, like, so let's just get that out of the way. I did not make money off of that FT. But as I became like a participant. In the space, both, uh, getting some crypto and then also specifically nfts docs really started, uh, connecting to, uh, for me in terms of like actual use cases where things could be super valuable. So with nfts, oftentimes people think about like digital art, right? And if you think about, like, Before NFTs, as if you were a digital artist, it was really hard to like monetize being a digital artist because like anyone could right click and save your work. And you know, that's that, uh, what NFTs afford the artists, the ability to do is. The art is now like tokenized on the blockchain and then someone can say that they lay claim to it that I own this Establishes provenance so that like maybe you Jon can say that you own, you know, this X copy is a famous artist You know at FT and you're the owner of it now The question becomes the skeptics is that like, all right, but that doesn't really solve the right clicking issue, right? Because okay, you can own that NFT Yeah, you can own the NFT. Cool. But I mean, you can still right click it also. So, uh, what's the value in that? And I think the analogy I give there is that think of, like, the Mona Lisa, right? Someone owns the Mona Lisa. And I don't know exactly who might be, um, the museum that it's at the Louvre. I don't know technically who the owner is, but just for sake of example, just indulge me for a moment is that there is an owner of like the Mona Lisa, but. Just because you have like a copy of the Mona Lisa doesn't mean that you own the Mona Lisa, right? You just have a copy of and there's probably millions if not like tens of millions of like copies of the Mona Lisa, whether it's an encyclopedia, whether it's like an image that you have on your computer, it could be even something that very much looks like a replica of the Mona Lisa with the right indentations on the oil painting and what have you. So all that's to say is at the end of the day, those are all copies, but there really is like true. There is one true owner of the Mona Lisa. So extending that analogy into the NFT world, it's the same concept. I mean, you could right click and save all that you want. And I own some digital art. And I would encourage you to right click and say, well, my digital art, because from my perspective, that just means that it's like valuable to you. And if you're like, sending it to people, it's going to help kind of proliferated out there and drive up like the value and like the quote unquote demand and maybe make it worth like, mean worthy. But at the end of the day, I own it though. Like, I have that provenance. So if I want to go and resell it, like, you know, whoever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, take purchases that would become like the new owner of it and people can right click away, but those are just copies at the end of the day. So, uh, that's just like 1 example of like, how things like I could see like a use case now for the digital artists. That's been just like creating art, but they didn't have really a way of monetizing it outside of maybe becoming like a graphical artist and working in the corporate world. They couldn't really creatively express themselves and monetize that. So. Yeah. Uh, to me, that was a huge unlock and then there's a whole royalty piece to that too, which is that for the digital artists? I mean, they could sell it to a person, but they can continue making royalties and perpetuity if it gets resold. Uh, so that also is like an interesting element. There's other like use cases out there that are super interesting to when you think about like membership tokens that you can be a member of like, some sort of club. And then when you have that. Like, let's call it that an NFT, but it's really like a membership card. You can, like, resell it to someone else, perhaps, which is something you can't really do in, like, the real world. If you're like a member of the Y, um, you're the member of the Y, the Y YMCA kind of controls that to centralize authority. And you can't, like, resell, like, your membership to someone else. Um, so there's, um, I can go on and on, but there's a whole bunch of different use cases that I found really compelling. So I, in 2021 decided, you know what, uh, I'm going to start getting into this space. And as I really got into this space and, um, started connecting with, like, different people, other participants through Twitter, which is like the main mode of communication in, um, the web 3 world. It, uh. I started to become really passionate about, you know, and I'm not like a professional broadcaster, as you know, like, and the least that I am just like some dude who lives in New Jersey, um, you know, talking to you from a finish attic. Um, so, like, the, the, the podcasting has never been like, in the cards for me,

but. you are doing good though. You have a good amount of following in and, uh, uh, you're very humble and I appreciate it, but you're, you're doing your thing. It's

Thanks. Thanks. I appreciate that, man. Yeah, it's just a passion project and like, you know, I had a day job at the time and I was just like, you know what? I'll just like, get on the microphone had to even purchase 1 that tells you to like the scope of like, uh, amount of like, focus I had on anything like podcasting or anything related to journalism. So, uh, when I got like a USB based microphone. Uh, started to finding like artists through Twitter that I found really compelling having like zoom sessions and recording those and not doing like any sort of editing or anything like that. And just putting out content out there. And if you go back, and I hope people don't do this, because it's going to be embarrassing, but if you go back and see, like, the 1st, few episodes. They were really awful at that being like, as far as like production quality goes, there was like, no editing done, even like my like inflections and all that other stuff. Like, I just didn't really know what the heck I was doing. And, uh, but I think because of the fact that it. I was talking to like emerging artists who might not be super popular at the time, but they were emerging and they kind of had their own like devoted followings and they're all very supportive of each other. I started to get a little bit traction off of that. So I have to say it wasn't so much because I was like a great podcaster. I happen to have like the right guests and um. It just kind of started to pick up and pick up traction. And then from there, the way these podcasts kind of work is that once you start getting like traction, then you have More inbound requests coming to you and saying, like, hey, can I hop on your pod? Hey, can I hop on your pod? So, um, I started it off back in. I want to say July 2022. so we'll be coming up on, like, 2 years, but although we'll have emerging artists here and there, uh, we will also have. Folks come on. So we've had like coin base. We've had art blocks. Uh, we've had, um, we're going to have optimism on for those of you that are like really big nine gag fans. We're going to have Ray Chan, the ceo come on in a few weeks. So, uh, we've had a lot of notable guests. And when we started off the podcast, It was called the dead NFT artist society. So for those of you that are really into NFTs, it was kind of a pun on, uh, dead fellows, the project and also a little bit of a mixture of, uh, the movie, uh, dead poet society. But, uh, after a little bit of time, we found that that didn't really land too well with the audience just because the pod tile had like a zombie, which some people thought was cute. Some people thought was a little menacing. It was very cartoonish. I don't know. So we did rebrand the show to the blockchain experience and that's what it's known today. And we're probably going to stick with that. And then the branding is more of a Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol type thing, like a lot of pop art. So I know I gave you a long narrative there, but that was really the whole journey as far as like, you know, starting off as kind of a guy who is. Skeptical, um, got into the space, got into podcasting and here I am today talking to you.

I think it's funny how you started off saying, you know, I'll put money into it. I didn't make any money though, you know, cause I feel like whenever someone says they got involved into crypto at a certain time, for me, I'm like, I'm waiting to ask the question, like, okay, so, like, did you make any money? Because it's like, kind of like going to Vegas, you know, like, hey, how much did you lose type of thing, you know? And, um, no, yeah, that's why I asked. Thanks for sharing your journey, because, um, just understanding the progression and that you're a human being and you, you switch some things. Things up. I'm sure there are other people listening that want to do the same, right? They want to, they have their own passion they want to get into. So I'm pretty sure that's an inspiring story as well. Um, and you have, I want to, I asked that question because I wanted to set the stage to the story that you shared with me with why you. Are working on what you're working on, which is very exciting. And I told a couple of people about what you're working on. So can you share that story of where, uh, you, you, you went to, I think, New York and you were speaking for an event and yeah, just, that's the story, man. I think people are going to feel that.

yeah, great tea up there. So, uh, you know, I've had this podcast and. You know, like I said earlier, and I say this with humility is that, you know, picked up some traction, had a following and there's an annual event called NFT NYC. Generally, it's not like CES where it's always like an early January. It's a little bit of a sliding scale. It could be anywhere. I think this year it's as early as February have to look at my calendar. Uh, but I, uh, typically I'm a speaker. Well, I shouldn't say typically because I've spoken twice so far. This will be my 3rd time. So it's not something I've been doing for like years.

are a speaker because you spoke in front of probably a good amount of people,

yeah. So, uh, it's something that since I've been in this space, I am a speaker at the event. So I'll be at the 1 coming up this year as well. And what happened was, is at the last 1 when I was a speaker, it was right around when the podcast started to pick up, uh, I did my thing. I spoke and then I got off stage. And like I said earlier, I'm just like this dude in New Jersey who records a podcast in a Finnish attic. Uh, there was like a whole bunch of people waiting to like speak to me and I found that incredibly flattering. It really warmed my heart that, you know, you do something and you're not really sure what's happening on the other end and you hope that it lands with people. But if not, that's cool. You know, I'm just having fun vibing with other people when I'm doing the podcast. But, uh, there, yeah, there was like this whole group of people that were just waiting to speak to me. And so. The thing that really was a little unsettling was the fact that I didn't really know who any of these people were. Um, and I think that is a common podcast dilemma because unless if someone is like listening and actively trying to like engage you, which I don't think happens very frequently, uh, you You just wouldn't know who your listeners are. And it was really Heartwarming to see that there's a lot of people that listen, but or at least I should say an unexpected number of people that listen and made an effort to like, you know, listen to me speak and then like, hang around and that sort of thing. So all that's to say is that it kind of to me triggered something, which is, you know what? There's got to be a better way to podcast. And so. I don't want to get too technical on this, but in the current state, podcasting is very much a pipeline which is one directional, which is like we podcast up top and then people just like get the information and it relies on something called an RSS feed, which I won't get too deep into, but it's essentially like a web one technology that's been around forever. And so. My thought process was is that you can actually leverage the blockchain and I don't mean in a crypto currency kind of a way or a speculative kind of a way. I just mean literally what I said earlier, which is it's a decentralized database here with like information on it. You can leverage this to kind of just like help solve that problem. And so what we can do, and I'll explain why in just a little bit is that we can make it like a 4 way pipeline, which is that it goes podcaster to fan and then fan to podcaster. And then even for like. Other listeners together and even other podcasters together. Uh, and the way that this can be done is I can build a podcast player, which is what I've been doing now and almost done with it called scoop three, which is when people listen to content, they get issued. A loyalty badge, but really what that loyalty badge is an NFT, but it's all happening under the hood. So when you're using them, I was very thoughtful about the way that I'm building scoop three is that you don't have to be like blockchain savvy or crypto savvy in the least bit, all that like blockchain stuff is really just happening under the hood. So what happens is, is that you're given a loyalty badge for listening to that episode, which might seem like a small little thing, but now if you kind of think about it, you have that loyalty badge. The podcast and it's on the blockchain, the podcaster can see that you have the loyalty badge. And if they see like a list or have like a whole bunch of different like loyalty badges for the same. Podcaster like yourself, then you can maybe acknowledge them in some way, whether it's to give like a shout out or something like, Hey, man, I appreciate you listening to the last last 25 episodes. In addition to that, you can build that this is more on a scoop three side, but even like a integration partner could do the same thing, which is build like integrations where you can kind of connect people together. So perhaps you can put up like a discord server, a telegram channel. And in order to enter either 1 of those, you know, the server or the telegram channel, you have to be a listener of the show, which means you have to have loyalty badges. So there's. I can go on and like there's a 1, 000, 001 different ways that these badges can be leveraged, and it's all up to the podcaster. Uh, so I set out to build this solution. I know the solution works because what I did after the after I spoke at at F. T. N. Y. C. is for every episode. I dropped shortly thereafter, just because I had to set up like the process and infrastructure. I encourage people that I had a link in the show notes to go to a website and then they could mint the episode that they just listened to as an NFT. And it was a friction filled process. You did have to like, remember to do it. You did have to pay a little bit of money to do it. It was a crude solution. It wasn't ideal. One like the one that I just described where it's all happening under the hood through the podcast player, and it required several steps, and the people involved did have to be crypto savvy to do, but we'd still get about like 200 minutes or so, meaning that like 200 different, you know,

which is impressive And sorry to interrupt but that I I see I see 200 people. I'm like There was a lot of friction and you still had like 200 people and um That that attributes to your following and then at the same time, if that amount of people went through all that friction for you, and then to make that so much easier, you just expanded that possibility for someone like myself or other people to make that connection. And then I also was thinking about and digesting what you were saying about. Using the badges and how somebody in that community has multiple badges and they might have badges to other shows. And so you can learn about other shows just by looking at someone's profile. And if you have some commonality, that's another Avenue that you can be discovered. And I feel like that referral. Community that referral energy of how to find other shows is it still remains like the number one way of any type of like, you know, there's affiliate prog programs and all kinds of stuff. So I like that. Can I even think of that until you just said it? And so there's the, an awareness boost, there's a community boost, and then there's a monetization boost. And I feel like if there's anything, I think the two big things that maybe you can elaborate, elaborate on maybe like one or two ways that this can help. With is, uh, maybe you can shed some light on the monetization part. Maybe some thoughts on the community part.

sure. Yeah. So, uh, the monetization part that I can speak to. So I will say that sometimes, uh, when I pitch the idea initially, I will get a little bit of resistance and I will be told like, oh, you're trying to go up against like Apple podcasts or you're trying to go up against Spotify. And those are like. You know, Goliath type of people or entities to go after and my response to that is no, we're not actually doing that. Because like I said, that that that audience 1 way download relying on like an RSS feed, but there is a whole big segment of people, podcasters that, uh, Um, Yeah. Want to monetize, but they have some reservations about going on platforms like Patreon, which I would argue is probably a closer. That's a more fairer. If you want to say, like, competitor, um, personally, I'm not on Patreon. Uh, I don't know if you are

it's a good platform. And the reason why I, I I just hear about,

a good platform. Yeah, I'm not going to say I'm not going to bash them at all. Like, I mean, they are like, kind of a competitor, but I'm not going to bash them, but there is like a good segment of it. I think it's like 15, 000 registrants that they have on there. So they've got a healthy number. But when you kind of zoom out, I think there's something like 400, 000 active podcasts out there. There's a lot more podcasts out there, but if you're going to narrow it down to 400, 000, Active podcast of their 15, 000 seems actually like a relatively small number. And so there's a huge A segment of podcasters that are not on there and do not have any intention of going on there for me personally. And I've spoken to other podcasters who feel the same way, which is that they have some reservations going there because they feel uncomfortable, like, going directly to their audience and asking them to, like, contribute money. Right. I know for me, I have that reservation. Like, I just don't want to have that kind of relationship with my audience. I'm not saying that, like, I'm not trying to virtue signal and there might be, uh, it might be just the way that I'm providing value to my listeners just might not lend itself very well to do that. But I could certainly see scenarios where patron might make sense. Uh, and there would be like a use case. There were the. Audience would feel inclined to contribute a few bucks. But all that's to say is like something like 98 percent of people just podcasters are just not on that platform. So they're just you could almost argue that they're underserved. So what? Something like scoop 3. Can do is still monetize, but just do it on a lot, a lot more roundabout kind of a way. And that way could be that you have, let's say, um, sponsors that appear on your podcast and what the sponsors, they just want to make sure that like they're getting the ROI that they're putting into it. And current state, they don't really know if they are or not, unless if the podcasters sharing the analytics that they get, but the analytics they get are not accurate. There are third party sources out there that they can rely on, which are very expensive. They're like tens of thousands of dollars, but even those are not accurate because a, RSS feeds, but then to make it worse, it's also relying on other signals. To like social media, the number of reviews that you have, and all those things are really not the best way of really getting data to see you. Like, if it's the following. And on top of that, those don't necessarily lend itself to say that it's the right following either. Like, they just. You know, if you're talking about, um, beer, like it might not be the right venue to like sell. So, or have a sponsor that's talking like, uh, sponsoring soap. Right? So it just like, you don't even know if it's like the right audience. So what scoops? Three does is with that more precise analytics, you can kind of tell, like, who are the, like, what's the audience? And like, when you're talking about what's almost like a social graph, like the types of podcasts, you can kind of almost develop like personas that generally the people that listen to this podcast are interested in this. So, as a podcaster, you can negotiate a lot better. Sponsorship deals, because you have like a right fitted audience that's backed by analytics and you can even like make it interesting, which is oftentimes like sponsors have like a product that they're selling or a service that they're selling. They can, and it's very easy to do their integrations with Shopify that will support where like. Everyone who listens to this particular episode or these episodes in general, they get like a 5 or 10 percent discount on the product, uh, and they can token gate that on Spotify very easily so that there's a verification to make sure that they're a listener and then they get that discount. There's a whole bunch of different unlocks there that can happen as well. It sounds maybe a little bit convoluted, but rest assured, like when we roll this out, we're, especially with our first cohort of, uh, podcasters, we're gonna really handhold them in terms of the process and support them. It's not gonna be so convoluted for the listener, actually. They're just gonna listen to content and they're just gonna be told like, okay, you know, you listened to this episode, you can go over here and get like a discount on this, this thing that we talked about, or. Uh, you can hop on to this discord server on the podcaster and we're going to have to do a little bit of handholding and like, support the podcasters that are going to be part of the 1st cohort on, um, setting these things up because we're setting them up for the 1st time and making sure that they're scalable. And then also just getting some early feedback to see, like. What are the integrations that make the most sense right? I mean, right out of the gate. I just know that's Shopify. Like, I don't even have to get feedback for that. I just know that Shopify is something that you guys are going to want. It's something that I would want as well. Uh, discord telegram, I think are like quick wins, but there might be some other integrations out there that. Podcast. Would want that. We just would want to get that feedback because podcasting has different intents and purposes for some folks. Um, for me personally, it's just because I just like doing it, you know, like that's cool. And if I can make a few bucks doing it, great, but I'm not going to stretch my, you know, stretch myself doing that. But for some folks, it's actually not about the sponsorships. It's about like they have a. Product or service that they're selling, or they just want to establish themselves as a subject matter expert. And so what they're hoping to do is widen their reach. And ideally, but it's very difficult to do right now with web. 1 is. Bring these listeners in on like the top of their sales funnels as leads. With Scoop3, that's going to be actually very easy to do, but with the current state, it really is not like you have to find a clever way to get their email address somehow or something to identify them and then kind of enter them into the funnel. So all that's to say is, yeah, there's going to be a lot of different ways that this technology can be leveraged to really benefit the podcaster and the listener. I'm going to say one more thing. thing is because I spent a lot of time talking about the podcast, right? I'm going to go back to talking about the listener and I'll just throw out a couple of stats, which is one. 80 percent of podcast listeners, according to a study done by Podchaser, have said that they want a closer relationship with their podcasters. It makes sense because another study, I think it was done by Edison Research, indicates that the average podcast listener spends about 7 hours listening to podcasts. Which is a lot of time, because this I had to Google, like how much time do you actually spend with your friends? Uh, and I did some Googling and the average American spends about 2 hours a week with their friends, which I think still a little bit high, you know, to be honest with you. I mean, if you think about, like, the average time that you spend with friends, like, so I question that's that it might not be as high, like, as 2 hours. You might

I gotta say

of text messages, but

when, um, as you get older, your group of friends start to build their families. And so that dynamic drastically changes. And then your social media, all of a sudden, you see a bunch of babies popping up. I'm like, Oh, no, it's happening. So, yeah.

Yeah, you're dead on. Yeah, that certainly happened to me as, um, you know, a father of two Children, uh, young Children. That is, is that it just the whole dynamic kind of changes. And I can't really truthfully say that I actually spend like 2 hours a week with my friends like they're over at my place. I'm over at their friends, but we'll accept that at space value. But I think one thing that is true is that for the podcast listeners, About average, they do. It makes sense. They're probably listening to it like every day for an hour or so. Um, maybe different podcasts, but what have you, but they're probably spending about that much, whether it's on a commute or as they work. So, all that to say is that there is this appetite, you know, part of that product fit that there is this appetite, even on the podcast listener and to just have that closer relationship with their

I like the, um. The whole, I mean, the whole idea with the monetization part. I know that that's a lot, a big thing for the hosts. Um, and just coming out of pod fest, I just was talking to a lot of coaches and people that have a lot of coaches, a lot of mental health coaches. And yeah, a lot of it is that's their business. And then they have their podcasts. It's just kind of like, Hey, I'm a human being. And like, I go through these things and we have some commonality, but to turn a potential listener into a client. Or just that communication, if you can close that gap, especially when you're building seven hours worth of relationship. Uh, if you can close that gap, you can get more feedback, you can serve the community even more and faster and more direct, which is great. That's why I get so excited when I talk to you about this. Uh, and now I'm thinking about myself. I'm like, when I got into crypto, I had to get a crypto wallet and then you got the keys. And so I'm hearing, okay, so there's, and I'm like, and then at the, at the same time, what blockchain is it going to sit on? So all these things are coming into my head. Me, you know, I have the algorithms attacking me saying this blockchain is going to be great and that one's not good. And then, you know, um, they stole my money. So what can you say to someone like myself that, um, is just thinking, hmm, I don't want to. Get it wallet. And like, like what's the experience for customer? Oh, not customer, but like a listener.

Yeah, that's a great question. This was the thing that I was really like gung ho about is that we're building this for the masses Whether you're a podcaster or podcast listener, so you actually don't need to have any blockchain crypto knowledge Whatsoever because truly all this stuff is happening under the hood. So If you have like an aetherium address We can use that. Okay. So if you're like someone like me, maybe perhaps like yourself, like we can use that. But if all you have is just like an email address, you can just use an email address and it's going to work exactly the same way as if you have like an Ethereum address and you can collect these loyalty badges. If you ever want, you can make that transition into like making it like into an Ethereum address, like getting gaming visibility to that. If not, that's cool. You can just continue using your email address.

You just said something very interesting. You said email address. Now, when you register for the app, usually, yes, you create a profile and it's your email address and that's tied to the tokens. Does that mean that the host has direct access to your email? And is that tied into the show as far as their connection to the. Listener.

So, not necessarily, um, we do not disclose the email addresses for just privacy reasons, but there are. Other ways that you can get information about the listener that they opt into, um, uh, just because we want the thing with the blockchain is, is a very delicate, uh, balancing act. So, uh, we don't, we don't do that. I mean, I like at all. Um, so there's complete privacy there. But there are web three identity services that we are partnered with, uh, like unstoppable domains is one of them that, um, if you opt into that, you can disclose that, you know, information. And I think for a lot of people, they would, I mean, that would be the reason that you. Beyond scoop three is that you want that recognition. I know for, um, when I talked about that solution that I gave you earlier, where people have to do all the minting stuff, they did all that because they want to get recognized, you know, and I'd read off their names on the podcast. And that was for me. That was the only thing that I was doing. I was not doing any. I mean, I could have. I was Not doing any of the Shopify integrations or discord server telegram, which we're going to support. I could have done all that stuff, but all I was doing was just reading off names on my podcast. And that was like a compelling reason enough for people to just want to purchase and make sure that their identity is revealed. So it is on an opt in basis. And we have integrations to support that. Um, but to answer the answer your question, though, like they can use an email address to gather the tokens. Um, or loyalty badges, I should say, and this is going to get a little bit technical here, but I will answer your question because I know that you have some, like, blockchain crypto people listening the solutions actually being there. Powered by Po app, which stands for proof of attendance protocol, fairly well known organization. I think that partnerships with like the MLB Budweiser, a whole bunch of other large conglomerates that use Po app as well. So it runs on the Gnosis blockchain, which is not as well known as the Ethereum or like Solana or Bitcoin, what have you. But 1 benefit of it is it's a Ethereum layer 2. So if you have an Ethereum app. Wallet address. Like you can use that. You don't need to get like a new wallet or anything. The other thing, which is really important is that it is so for the listener, it's absolutely going to be free, but like on the back end, it costs like fractions of a penny, which like, you know, us and PoeApple absorb. Um, we're totally happy doing that, but technically, yeah, it costs like a fraction of a fraction of a penny to mint those because we wanted to abstract all the. Nft stuff away from the like to to us. It's just like user experience. So like you just listen to a podcast. You get these loyalty badges. It doesn't matter if it's an NFT or not. It's just like, although technically it is, but we wanted to abstract that stuff. There's no speculative portion of it. There's no like you might lose. You're just collecting loyalty badges the same way that you might be collecting loyalty badges on. I don't know if you're familiar, but there's this Uh, app called product times where, um, you can look at different products that are about to be launched, like different companies go on there and they're about to launch their products. And if you really participate in this ecosystem, you can collect loyalty badges. The thing about these loyalty badges is they're great, but with any loyalty badge system, if product hunt goes under. The loyalty badges disappear, right? The thing is, is what the blockchain, I mean, hopefully scoop three never goes under, but if, if we do go under those loyalty badges are yours forever. Yeah. And that was one. Main driver is that you keep those loyalty badges. They don't the scoop. The loyalty badges do not depend on scoop. The reason for alliance. So that's part of going to the block chain part, which is it's just like a ledger that keeps information. So God forbid we do go under. Don't make it. You still own those loyalty badges forever. You can still connect with your community. You can still stay in touch with those. Like those connections will never go away. There could be even like another company that kind of like, no pun intended, scoops in and kind of picks up where the pieces left off and kind of rebuild things off of like, you know, the people that have loyalty badges that opted into the program. So that's, you know, 1 of the other cool checks

And those NFTs, the badges. It seems like it's scalable, right? Where, right now in the beginning, you're making it as simple and as approachable and easy as possible for someone to get in there and simply just listen to their favorite shows. Um, will a podcaster have to register their art, like, is it going to be separate from the RSS feed? Or is it going to tie in with the RSS feed?

Yeah, great question. So what we're doing is there's going to be a for the podcast or there's going to be a web based platform. Um, it's going to be very simplistic and design. It's not convoluted or anything like that. But what you can do is register your, uh, your. Podcasts on there. The only thing that we need is just your RSS feed. The same thing that you're providing Apple, the same thing that you're providing your, uh, you know, Spotify, just that same RSS feed. That's all we need on the badge front will design it for you. Actually, that cost us some money, but we're not going to pass that on to the podcasters who are taking care of our podcasters. So we'll do the whole white glove service like we will. Set up everything on the back end in terms of, uh, designing a badges for you. We'll take care of that. We will put them in the right places for you. Uh, all we need really is just like the RSS feed and then

you heard any, um, noises in the background, my wife just printed something. So you. might hear some like random boops and beeps. I'm like, alright, great. Um, no, that's awesome that it's a website, and then it's easier. I figured it was, but I wanted you to kind of elaborate. I'm, I'm super excited. I'm gonna tell a bunch of people, and anybody listening, if you have a favorite show outside of New Age Human, Feel free to let me know and I'll, I'll send them to David and we can get the awareness out if you're excited about this and you want to build that relationship with. More shows that being said there's something of a webinar coming up that you were talking about David that is Shedding more light, but in a different way. Can you kind of elaborate on that?

Yeah, so I will be hosting a webinar on February 1st, 2024 and I'm reading off the date just because. People might go back and listen to this podcast a couple years from now and, uh, wanted to highlight that. So February 1st, 2024, 1 p. m. Eastern, uh, 10 a. m. Pacific, and we are going to talk about the podcast platform. Scoop 3. Uh, we are going to focus mostly on the listener first. If you are a podcaster, super simple, but I'd be happy to like, engage with you one on one. And I can maybe send you over a link, Jon, which you already have where it kind of walks through the podcaster on like how things work. And if they want to apply for early access, we'd be happy to, uh, intake that from the podcaster. And then we're also going to talk a little bit about how we are doing a community raise on we funder. And what that means is that. S Scoop three's, parent companies, media, three labs, and we are a pre IPO company. We have investors. Typically what happens is, is that with these early stage startups and these pre IPO companies, they are gate kept to people that make either$200,000 a year or they have like a net worth of a million dollars plus. I might be a little bit off on those dollar amounts, but as you can see, it's not for like the everyday person. Um, which is kind of a bummer because it. Prevents other folks like from getting access to those outsized games to be able to invest early and like an early stage startup of Facebook or an uber very early in the game and that company goes up, you know, 250 X, but like, the people that make the money are generally the ones that don't need the money and that just kind of leaves everyone else. It's getting it. The everyday Joe gets kind of excited about our Jane gets excited about the fact that they get it at IPO day. They think that's a great valuation. What they might not know is that it was significantly valued less about a few years ago. And there's actually people that are going

I remember it was like

ton more

and we're like, yeah, let's go And then people were like

Um,

don't understand that you'd have to like qualify to invest and I was just like come on That's ridiculous

Yeah, that's another part of it. Yeah. That's another, that's such a great point. Just even participate in the IPO. You have to like qualify oftentimes. And yeah, just to highlight the point is that for like for the us, the everyday person, we're excited about the IPO. The other investors are super excited too, but they bought in at a fraction, like the quote unquote, the stock was a fraction of what the IPO price is. So. This model really bothered me. Like I just really bought it just bothers me on so many different levels because I understand the government. The U. S. Government's thought process on this is that early stage startups are risky. I get that. So people that have that kind of wealth. Can afford to lose it as easily as well. The thing is, is that there might be people that are less wealthy, but they're more sophisticated investors, right? Like, so just because you have that money doesn't necessarily make you smarter and it might be better to have a process in place. And I think they're talking about this, but it hasn't become law where maybe if you make under that threshold, you can just take a test. And then if you pass that test, then you can partake. But anyways, none of that. Like exists right now. So, um, if you're an everyday person, you're kind of shut out from the process. What we did was is we filed the paperwork with the S. E. C. went through financial audit. Everything of ours is out in the public. You can go to the S. E. C. website and you can go to the we funder website and that links you to it. So everything of ours is public transparent. Uh, but what can happen now is that if you're below those thresholds, in fact, literally everyone, I don't think there's any restrictions. Really? Um, I might be wrong on that. So if I'm wrong on that, sorry, but to my knowledge, there are no restrictions. Virtually anyone can go in and they can invest in media 3 labs, which is the owner of Scoop three, and they're an early stage startup. They're getting the exact same terms as some of those wealthy people, which were engaging some of those wealth, like they call them angel investors. Uh, they're participating as well. Uh, they're getting the same exact terms, the same exact valuation. And you can invest as little as a hundred dollars to be able to. To participate in that. Um, so I can't talk about the terms and conditions too much on the, uh, on the webinar because the SEC would prefer, um, you know, because everything we do is above board. They would rather direct listeners, viewers, what have you to go to the SEC to read all the fine term, uh, the prints of the valuation, all that stuff. So I can't speak to that. Uh, so I'd encourage, I'd hopefully, uh, do so. But the thing that I can't speak Speak about is that I was very adamant about the gatekeeping piece that I just didn't want people who wanted to invest to be prevented from doing so. And I didn't want the dollar amounts to be an issue also. So the best way to analogize it, I'll close it off real quick. As I know, I can talk because I'm a podcaster, uh, is that if everyone's familiar with Robin hood, right? We funder the platform that we're using is basically the Robin hood for pre IPO companies. So, uh, what Robin hood did is like a kind of eliminated the fees. You can throw like 2030 bucks into a stock that might be trading for 1000 or what have you kind of like a similar concept in the same sense is that we are really catering. And serving that demographic of people that just want to throw like a few bucks, 100 bucks, you know, something that they might spend on like a nice dinner and, um, kind of have a reasonable expectation of some sort of ROI at the end that they might be an early stage investor into something that could go unicorn status. Hopefully we will. And, you

as we close the show, is there anything else that you are working on? I know we, we mentioned, well, the main point of the show was to talk about Scoop, but is there anything like what, what people, where people can find you, your show, anything like that you want to share?

Thanks, man, for the opportunity. So, uh, my podcast is called the Blockchain Experience. You can find me on Twitter. Uh, my Twitter handle is met David e uh, all just like one word, META, David, D-A-V-I-D-E-T-H, all one word again, and you can find me on there. And then, uh, the company's name is Media Three Labs. Our website is media three labs.com. So that's media. M-E-D-I-A. The number three, so the actual number labs. com. And if you go there, we have a link where you can read about the investment opportunity. You can also sign up to be, uh, waitlisted as a listener for scoop three. And there's also an additional link. If you're a podcaster who wants to be on scoop

No,

we can intake you there as well. And you know what? I just love, like, as you can tell, I just like, love talking. So I'm just so like, dude, throw me like a cold DM. I'll respond. Like my DMS are open on Twitter. Throw me a cold DM. If you want, we can just meet up and like riff. And, um, I'm always just, you know, love just talking

awesome. I, um, there's so much more that I know we can get into, but I wanted to make sure that we have the meat and the potatoes, right? The so we can get a feel for you. Why the what? And now we just spoke about the where. So I'm excited about that. And, um, I most likely will either probably probably be attending the recording. If you do have a recording of the webinar, um, yeah. Cause I'm still working at the point of, uh, at a time of this recording. So yeah, I encourage anybody to look into that. You can, you can reach out to me. You can reach out to David. You can reach out to me as usual, new human. com and just hit that contact button. But other than that, man, thanks for coming onto the show. This was cool. I'm excited for the project and, um, uh, it's a bright future for, for a lot of the industry.

Thanks, Jon. Really appreciate the opportunity. Amazing podcast. So, uh, great to connect with you, man.