Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Web3 Gaming Onboarding & Adoption Outlook with Myria

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Web3 Gaming Onboarding & Adoption Outlook with Myria · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

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  They're going to be diving into a little bit more around Web three technology and
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  some of the trends around not only onboarding, but where Web three gaming is
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  going to go. I think you guys gonna like it. My name is
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  Paul Barren. Welcome back into tech Path. This is a good one.
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  Today we're going to be breaking down a few things on not only Web three
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  gaming the front of where Web three gaming is going, but also how you
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  know consumers in general, how Web three or how web gamers in general are
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  going to be adopting into Web three. I do want to thank our sponsor
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  today and that is Maria. If you guys are looking at redefining the future
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  of gaming, this is one of the places to do it, and Maria
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  is one of those platforms that really goes into an evolution of building within a
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  game ecosystem. So make sure and visit Maria dot com. You guys can
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  learn a bit more over there. We'll have them on the show here in
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  a minute to kind of chat about some of the trends that are happening.
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  I also want to break into some of the trends around where not only crypto
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  is going, but also where Web three adoption is going. If you look
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  at some of the key findings this year, forty percent now of American adults
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  own crypto, up thirty percent from twenty twenty three. Sixty three percent hope
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  to obtain more cryptocurrency, and you can kind of see here twenty one percent
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  of non owners said the anticipated bitcoin ETFs which have happened now would put them
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  into a more likely investment. What this simply frames as is the potential for
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  people getting into Web three, which opens up an opportunity in gaming going forward.
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  And of course, here's Forbes talking about gaming is growing and Web three
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  is coming with it, and we've seen this at several conferences where we've started
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  to see a lot more game developers, a lot more technology rolling into the
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  space. One of the key things though that has been in the space has
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  been the concern around onboarding. And onboarding is a matter of just people getting
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  into a game, staying in a game, and going that direction. Ninety
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  percent of users now drop off during the wallet creation. That's a big challenge,
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  but we are seeing some shifts going into that. So we want to
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  kind of break down all of this today with a guest, and this of
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  course is mister Andrew Silbert, who is the co founder and CTO, coming
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  in from Miria. Great to have you back, Andrew. Thanks, Thanks
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  Paul, glad to be here. Yeah, So Andrew, let's get into
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  a couple of topics here. I want to talk about first, when you
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  look at the web three wallets in general. Obviously Phantom has been one of
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  the leaders out there, but metamasks still a very active space. We're seeing
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  a lot more interaction now with Web three gaming in general, and we look
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  at the ecosystem of wallets and the ease of getting into the space. What's
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  your opinion right now in terms of that technology and has it been able to
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  achieve more ease of use. That's a great question. So yeah, I
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  mean, you know, we like to look at the sort of holistic flow
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  of onboarding and keeping people in and wallets is definitely one of the first things
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  that people encounter in their sort of journey towards getting involved in the Web three
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  in the crypto space, and I think that you know a lot of people
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  will just sort of, you know, pull the rip cord at that point.
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  They there's a lot of terminology and things that they don't understand. Uh,
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  you know, they see log strings of numbers and you know, and
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  hexadecimal and they just don't know what it is. And the thing about the
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  thing about Phantom actually that you know, I think has really been resonating with
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  people is just that, I mean, it looks so damn friendly, and
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  you would think, like, oh, okay, what does that matter because
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  you know a lot of you know, d gens and geeks and walks like,
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  you know, they don't really care, you know, as long as
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  they can get in and do their thing, then it doesn't matter. I
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  mean, in fact, sometimes even the more archaic the better for them,
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  because it makes them kind of feel like they're in a club. But for
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  the large majority of people, you know, there really is something to be
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  said for the visual harmony of of a user experience, I mean, and
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  it brings to mind. So you know, you look at something like a
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  phantom and you know it has, uh, it's just so visually damn friendly.
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  It has the you know, very clean, bold and uncluttered interface,
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  the line, it has very sort of friendly curves and lines and very uh
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  you know, approachable colors and things. Uh. And then another aspect,
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  of course, for you know, the phantoms that it is multi chained,
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  so Salon and ethereum. So the fact that it has you know, all
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  of these different uh you know, these different currencies supported, it's certainly something
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  that you know, makes people, you know, more more inclined to use
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  it. And uh yeah, So I mean I think that the combination plus
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  it has social elements baked in. I mean, you know, it really
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  does look like much more like a you know, a social app that you
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  would use these days than some sort of you know, Linux based terminal program
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  or something like that. So it's uh, you know, I think that
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  the totality of the sperience is definitely I think they got the I think they
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  got the one right well. I think, you know, the situation right
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  now is just the immediacy that Phantom brings to a brand new crypto users.
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  They're able to kind of get engaged pretty quickly. Seven million active users this
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  is back and probably closer to ten million now. This was coming in from
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  end of April. Phantom continues to grow here in terms of growth, I
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  was looking at, you know, the potential here also of just some of
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  the games. When we look at the number of games that are being on
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  board, I was looking at your site. You guys have a whole slew
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  of new game developers and a lot of new game platforms. In terms of
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  the explosion of how players are starting to come to the market. Obviously,
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  while let's make a big part of that, but I'm curious when you look
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  at the developer side of it, are you seeing more and more activity coming
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  over from the Web two space into Web three now more than ever or is
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  it still more kind of culturally driven Web three devs that are are building most
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  of these games. It's a mix. I think that there's absolutely the sort
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  of hardcore studios that were founded with Web three in mind, and then there
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  is of course the sort of crypto Web three curious and uh they've been a
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  little bit more tentative, but they but you know, they these things have
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  a little bit of a latency to them, and so you know, as
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  the market kind of goes up and down, then uh, you know,
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  we will see waves where you know, a company will decide to make a
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  move into the space, and maybe it's a Web two company, they'll make
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  them they will have made a decision some months ago and then only you know,
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  only recently will they actually have ramped up an internal team that's ready to
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  actually start implementing this sort of thing, and at that time, they'll will
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  they'll you know, start contacting us. And so despite the fact that uh,
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  you know, you do hear people taking a little bit more of a
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  wait and see stance, they're still out there and they're still you know,
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  we still take their calls. They're still they're still absolutely interested. But I
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  think that it's more as a compliment to their you know, to their primary
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  core business as opposed to, uh, you know, just a wholesale replacement
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  of Yeah, we're we're looking a lot of interoperability right now. You look
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  at this tweet right here, Future Versus launching an open metaverse starting with Ready
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  Player one, Roadblocks and even Fortnite. So we're starting to see this interactivity
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  of what was you know, Web Web two now becoming a little bit more
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  Web three friendly. Obviously, we've seen projects start to launch within the Epic
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  Game Store, all sorts of things. With all that being said, and
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  with what you guys are doing, and you look at this interoperable future that
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  is out there, what is your opinion, you know, as a tech
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  guy, are you building for that? And are you seeing more and more
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  games that are starting to build for that future. So that's a has been
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  you know. The interoperability has always been sort of one of the north stars,
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  sort of the holy grail of the web three space, you know,
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  because it really speaks to part of the very you know, the core,
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  uh you decentralized ownership nature of it, and and so yeah, I mean,
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  uh, a lot of you know, I think that it's always like
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  I said, been uh been sort of a dream. But it comes down
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  to a question of sort of standards and who you know, just like a
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  lot of things in the industry, like you know, file formats or single
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  sign on mechanisms, and this will sort of touch on you know, other
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  tough like you know, gamer I ds and things. Uh, it comes
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  down to, you know, what becomes the lingua franca for these different platforms,
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  because you can't you know, one can't just wish itself into existence and
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  declare itself the you know, we are going to be interoperable and everybody adopt
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  us. It has to evolve organically. For example, like Unreal has a
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  five format UEF and the Unreal editor for Fortnite, which has been has been
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  gaining some traction as a standard, and so you know, that's the sort
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  of thing which you know, if one uh, you know, if one
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  developer starts to adopt it, then it will start the snowball effect. And
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  you know, sometimes these things can handy sort of willed into existence by some
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  big eight hundred pound gorilla like a Fortnite, but sometimes they sort of come
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  out of nowhere. And so, you know, for game developers to try
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  to work that into their into their ecosystem, they have to sort of be
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  a little bit circumspect about which one they choose to invest their their time and
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  their tooling into. You know, obviously you don't want to you know,
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  constrain other games by satan that you know, this particular item has only this
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  type of utility. So it's really up to each developer to decide how they
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  want to honor that interoperable item. Right, so, once they actually have
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  decided to conform, then it's like, okay, maybe this these shoes give
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  you extra leap in a basketball game, uh, you know, but maybe
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  they give you extra speed in a you know, in some sort of racing
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  game. So and that's really up to the individual developers. And there's you
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  know, I don't think that there's anybody, there's ever going to be,
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  or it's going to quite a while until there's a a sort of ready player
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  one style metaverse that has a uniform is widely adopted and has a uniform set
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  of universe rules. Then I have a hard time seeing the utility there being
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  you know, carrying across you know, the interoperability realm. But yeah,
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  I mean it's really yeah with that thought, I mean because now you're kind
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  of talking about the potential there. If you look at what meta has been
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  able to do in VR and what we'll see most likely in terms of advancements,
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  what is your take right now on both on VR, OUR and or
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  XR in general, when we look at extended reality and where we are today,
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  especially with some of the devices that metas coming out with, we're seeing
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  a lot more interaction now with other platforms and the potential for n f T
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  s and or interoperability maybe becoming to a real reality. Do you see that
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  as a real future, at least in the near future for how web three
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  gaming could evolve? H I do I think that? So VR, you
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  know, VR and AR and x R, you know, they've had a
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  you know, sort of a long and storied journey you know of mainstream you
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  know of broad adoption, right, you know, what's the killer app and
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  things like that, and it's been you know, uh, uh, you
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  know, it's been a chicken and the egg sort of thing because you know,
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  the people will only pour in resources develop the applications if there's an install
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  base, and uh, you know, people will only buy the hardware if
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  there's things for them to do, and so you know, a certain amount
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  of that has been tied up up in uh, you know, surmounting certain
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  technical technical hurdles like you know, field of view and frame rate and you
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  know, pixel density and things like that. Apple, you know, Apple
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  introduced their you know, their Vision Pro and you know, very high resolution
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  and it's got all this great eye tracking, very expensive and actually recently they
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  you know, they pulled back on their their strategy a little bit. Instead
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  of you know, really leaning into that super high end device, they're they're
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  pivoting a little bit towards the meta direction, you know, the meta horizon.
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  A lot of the VR technology is going to be empowered by a lot
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  of the advances in AI. I think that some of the limitations in terms
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  of the user experience will be will be dealt with when whether it you know,
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  it comes from you know, sort of the deep leentering, the d
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  l s S, the super sampling that comes from you know, this using
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  AI to be able to you know, get the images in you know,
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  faster to the device so that it's you get a better feel for it,
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  or having a more expansive world. So I think that these technologies are going
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  to sort of eat on each other, and so I think that to that
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  end, we will be bootstrapping our way into this metaverse type of a world
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  where you know, we are wearing our headsets and that again, you know,
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  one of the one of the reasons why you know, br and Ar
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  so appealing to you know, us people who are so excited about Web three
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  is because it really does represent a sort of a liberation. You know,
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  it's this whole other world. You're out there and you know, you own
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  your stuff and you're out exploring and it's you know it really it really speaks
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  to that inner sort of adventurer in the Web three space. Yeah, I'm
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  I definitely see it moving up, Andrew, do you see the the I
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  guess the implementation of AI tools being used much more frequently now in new upstart
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  Web three games. As you guys start to see some of the games coming
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  onto the Maria platform, are you seeing more AI integration now or is it
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  just barely being touched. Well, I mean the space is moving so fast
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  that you know, there's a little bit of a lag. What I do
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  see is that you know, people are leveraging a lot of the you know,
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  you have these you know stable diffusion and these diffusion based models which are
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  helping artists create you know, collections of n f t s and things like
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  that, and I mean it's actually getting quite interesting. I was looking over
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  a new workflow that involved the Leonardo and then also a tool which basically brings
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  things into three D. So in other words, not just having these you
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  know, variations of tokens, but also you know, building you know three
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  D models just from a two D image, you know, like you know
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  a little creature, and then it brings it into three D. It textures
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  it, it skins it, it rigs it, and then you know you
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  can have it up and running around. Web three has a lot of you
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  know, because and Myria, for example, you know, we have our
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  distributed nodes and AI is extremely compute and intensive, right, and so you
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  know, I can absolutely envision a world in which these different you know,
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  node owners are actually operating compute, which is running these you know, these
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  large you know, maybe multi billion parameter models to do inference to figure out
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  maybe training your own character, so you know, you would create your own
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  character minted into an NFT and then launch it out into the world to you
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  know, combat other players and also train it where you know, your character
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  can go do battle and things like that. And it can also lead back
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  into the utility of the nodes because you know, you're generating value by providing
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  this compute. So I think it all is intertwingled in that way. Well
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  that's I mean, that's a good evolution. I think where Web three is
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  gone could be that Web three gaming could be the real center of that kind
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  of innovation going forward if we see you know, some good devs really kind
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  of latch onto both AI's use case but also the functionality of AI. So
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  definitely one to watch. Last point I want to hit with you on is
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  MECA. In the EU, we've had the markets and crypto assets regulation happening.
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  This is rolling out now, so we're going to start to see real
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  use case of blockchain stable coins, all sorts of n f T projects you
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  name it is most likely going to start to deploy in the EU. This
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  of course, could have huge implications on new projects being developed, including gaming
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  projects. What is your current opinion on how this will affect the gaming industry
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  Web three gaming industry in the next couple of years. Yeah, so,
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  I mean, it's it's interesting, you know, Europe seems to they're one
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  of their sort of biggest your europe sort of primary exports these days is regulation
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  and as you as you as you say, you know, in two days,
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  I think then sections three and four of the MECA stable coin standards going
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  to effect, and you know, the the impromter of it lends legitimacy,
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  which gives confidence to the you know, to the space, and which results
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  you know, you know, a very flourishing market. And then there's other
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  people who worry that, you know, more regulation will stifle creativity and freedom
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  in the marketplace. I actually happen to be fall into the former category,
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  so I look on it as a good thing. Good well, Andrew,
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  it's always good kind of picking your brain to learn a little bit more about
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  where you guys are going thanks again for stopping in today. We appreciate it.
• 17:26
  Yeah, thank you. I had a great time. You bet all
• 17:29
  right. So, if you guys are maybe listening over on the podcast side
• 17:32
  of things, make sure and jump over here to the YouTube channel. This
• 17:34
  is the best place to get subscribed. And also you can join the Diamond
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  Circle, which is our private group where we do a lot of additional content.
• 17:41
  And of course you can always follow me out there on x at Paul
• 17:45
  Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on tech Math,